Salary for engineers?

rookie84 wrote:

Hello, fellow expats!

I am currently working for a Korean construction company, and we are trying to hire architecture and civil engineers who have good experience in KSA(minimum 5 years). However, when I interviewed a few people, their salaries seem to be very high compared to what engineers are paid for in Korea... and I thought the salaries would be lower as we are looking for people from Middle East. Plus we also have to pay them for housing and transportation. I was wondering what is the realistic salary for an engineer with 5 to 10 years of experience in KSA. I would really appreciate any help on this. Thanks in advance!!

You didn't write the numbers; how could we tell what is "very high?"

Let me give you some examples from real life salary of arcitecture engineers I know.

*- Years of experience/kSAR per Month

*- 3/9.7
*- 7/16.2
*- 4.5 (say 5)/13.0

Starting salaries I see in construction companies I see are between 6.5 and 9.0 kSAR

Advanced or professional engineers get way higher than that, especially those with certifications and working projects, could shoot beyond 40.0 kSAR in as little as 8-10 years of experience.


Their salaries greatly depend on their technical experiences and leadership skills.

Edit: The numbers I gave were for basic salaries. Accommodation and transportation allowances were not included.


Regards,

Thank you. That was very helpful. Regarding what I was referring to as very high, I kept getting numbers north of 20K SAR per month. I guess salary for engineers in Korea is not that good, as architecture and civil engineers with 20 years of experience earn such amount(well, those who work for small companies. Big companies like Samsung, you will probably make over 20K within 3 years of working for them but it is extremely hard to get into those big companies).

Anyway, thanks for the help!

rookie84 wrote:

Thank you. That was very helpful. Regarding what I was referring to as very high, I kept getting numbers north of 20K SAR per month. I guess salary for engineers in Korea is not that good, as architecture and civil engineers with 20 years of experience earn such amount(well, those who work for small companies. Big companies like Samsung, you will probably make over 20K within 3 years of working for them but it is extremely hard to get into those big companies).

Anyway, thanks for the help!

There are many companies of South Korea I find impressive, including Samsung (look at our phones), Hyundai (look at our cars), Doosan (look at some of the tractors used in our current mega projects),LG (Look at our ACs, fridges, TVs and Washing-machines).


My college friend, back in the states, was South Korean. He works with Samsung now. Yes, he says the benefits are amazing.

Samsung products and innovations impress me, and I like this company. I cannot imagine what working with them feel like!

I am very glad I could be of help.

Regards,

In every country there is a bench mark salary rate which is decided by a lot of factors like availability of such skill, inflation in the market, nationality of the incumbent (this only in MENA region) , average pay increases, type of industry etc etc. Just b'z korean engineers are paid less / more in Korea does not mean they are to be paid less / more here, similarly you cannot compare the rate in Korea to the rate here in KSA since the economy, living expenses, standard or living, purchasing parity etc are all different.

If you want to realistically determine the value for a job - evaluate the job first and see the pay for such job weight in KSA market with similar companies / industry . this will give you a realistic idea of the range of the salary that you need to pay.

It is simply irresponsible to have underestimated the labor costs.You must be under a lot of pressure to deliver better resorts.  Don't squeeze the working man so you can protect your profit margins. Pay your people  what corresponds to the work they are hired to do NOT based on race, country of origin! Pay them decent housing and transportation allowances based on KSA standards. Otherwise, try to find a sole Korean workforce to come here the kingdom and work under these conditions under lax labor laws.

No, I am not under any pressure. I am simply trying to find out the correct salary to pay for our employees, hence the reason why I asked here. You need to relax. We are a relatively new company and I am just trying to gather more information so I can report the correct salaries so that we can budget accordingly to hire the right people. We never squeeze the working men although you do have to understand that as much as we'd like to pay as much as possible, as a company, we cannot do that. But we do try to pay people according to the correct salary in the kingdom hence the reason why I am doing the research. Plus we apply the same standards as Korea for our local employees here in the kingdom. Although Korean labor laws might not be as good as European or American, it is lightyears ahead of KSA's so you can say that we treat our employees well. We do offer good benefits and treat all our employees with respect. We also never pay salaries even one day late(even to our labors), which you know is not always the case around here for construction companies. We believe in treating people right will always result in much greater profits in the future.

Again, I am just doing the research to find the benchmark in order to pay the CORRECT SALARY so relax.

How come your company that you are hiring for don't know the salaries of engineers in KSA?  That's kind of weird.

[Moderated: no free ads pls]

We had very contradicting reports on salaries of engineers. The range simply too much. We did gather information from our partners, other engineers, etc. but there was too much of a gap so I decided to ask here as well since gathering as much information as possible cannot hurt.

Upto this moment, we just brought engineers from Korea for whatever projects we had but as we are growing rapidly, an engineer or two with good experience in KSA is becoming necessary for us. The thing that is difficult about salaries is that once you start high, it is very hard to come down. Therefore I just want to make sure we start off in a correct scale.