TARDEC Electrical Engineering Salary

General Discussion for SMART Scholarship Recipients
malarious
Posts: 101
Joined: Tue Jun 13, 2017 1:54 am
Contact:

TARDEC Electrical Engineering Salary

Post by malarious »

Hey all, I am supposed to start in TARDEC when I graduate, but the information on pay is always a range. Anyone have information on the starting salary as a Bachelors of Electrical Engineering? Failing that, any higher degrees?

Thanks!

HopingToHelp

Re: TARDEC Electrical Engineering Salary

Post by HopingToHelp »

malarious wrote:Hey all, I am supposed to start in TARDEC when I graduate, but the information on pay is always a range. Anyone have information on the starting salary as a Bachelors of Electrical Engineering? Failing that, any higher degrees?

Thanks!
I don't have an first hand experience with TARDEC, but as you know they use the DB scale, so it is a little harder to estimate than that GS. However, in trying to find an answer to your question, I ended up finding a resource on this forum... that you had posted. Back in this thread (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2080) you posted the ARL DB paytable, but I think you weren't sure how how to read it. I'll try to help you interpret it, but I've never dealt with DB scale, so others may know better.

First, find your job series and match it to the category. This gets us to "Engineers & Scientists." Then we need to pick a Pay Band, I think we can do this by working backwards from the equivalent GS. With a Bachelor's you would start at a GS-7 (technically GS-5 is Bachelor's, and GS-7 is Bachelor's with high academic achievement, but in qualifying for SMART, you'll meet that threshold). From this, we know it will be "DB2," the pay band for GS 5/1 to GS 11/10 (Translation GS 5 step 1 to GS 11 step 10). There are 3 variants of "DB2," so since you are electrical engineering, you'll want "DB2e2." Finally, you'll pick the locality. There is a column for Detroit, MI. For the GS scale, this is in the same locality area as Warren, MI (where I think TARDEC is), so this column is where I would look. So your pay band will be "$37,630 - $87,091".

From my limited know of DB, I think they are allowed to start you anywhere in this range. I would recommend try to find market price for someone of your credentials online, and maybe even trying to do some interviews and get offers that you can show them to support this market valuation.

To narrow this window a bit more, I think we can consider the GS scale again. This pay band encompasses GS 5 through GS 11, but engineers skip GS 8 and GS 10, so really its GS 5, 7, 9, and 11. They don't occupy equal quarters of this range, but for rough math I think we can say they do. From that I would say, if on the GS scale you'd be a 7, then within that payband you could reasonably expect $49,995 - $62,360. (The OPM calculator for the GS scale gives a $45,266 - $58,844 range, which might be closer to what you should expect).

Takeaways: You should expect ~$45,266 - $62,360, maybe you can negotiate a little higher, but likely not by much unless you have some stellar credentials. If they offer less than $45,266, its not really a fair offer.

think

Re: TARDEC Electrical Engineering Salary

Post by think »

malarious wrote:Hey all, I am supposed to start in TARDEC when I graduate, but the information on pay is always a range. Anyone have information on the starting salary as a Bachelors of Electrical Engineering? Failing that, any higher degrees?

Thanks!
Talk to HR at TARDEC. For DB it's gpa based.

Guest

Re: TARDEC Electrical Engineering Salary

Post by Guest »

I work there. I transferred from another place, with PhD, at the GS13 equivalent in DB-03.

I'm not sure where exactly they start EE folks with a bachelors degree, but the vast majority of them that I know are DB-03 as well. (It is possible that they start out as DB-02 with a career ladder into DB-03 after some period of time).

Guest

Re: TARDEC Electrical Engineering Salary

Post by Guest »

Thanks for the answers all!

Mememe

Re: TARDEC Electrical Engineering Salary

Post by Mememe »

I haven't started at tardec yet, but did my site visit last summer.
One of the smart awardees already there suggested we would probably start around 60k. The liaison also mentioned something about an 18 month ladder within the db, although I cant really remember if she said anything more specific than that.

iSmellBS

Re: TARDEC Electrical Engineering Salary

Post by iSmellBS »

Mememe wrote:I haven't started at tardec yet, but did my site visit last summer.
One of the smart awardees already there suggested we would probably start around 60k. The liaison also mentioned something about an 18 month ladder within the db, although I cant really remember if she said anything more specific than that.
Are you positive about the 18 month thing? Not the first time you've posted that number either.

I work for another one of the RDEC's in a different (higher) locality than Detroit, and organization wide the time from DB02 to DB03 is 30 months. I have a few friends who are at TARDEC (by the way the name changed, no longer TARDEC but that's fine) and they have never heard of the 18 month progression. It is possible since we all switched to the demo not that long ago but I'm highly skeptical. If you're not positive about this, stop posting it, making the 85k of DB03 in 18 months vs 30 months is a significant difference.

Mememe

Re: TARDEC Electrical Engineering Salary

Post by Mememe »

iSmellBS wrote:
Mememe wrote:I haven't started at tardec yet, but did my site visit last summer.
One of the smart awardees already there suggested we would probably start around 60k. The liaison also mentioned something about an 18 month ladder within the db, although I cant really remember if she said anything more specific than that.
Are you positive about the 18 month thing? Not the first time you've posted that number either.

I work for another one of the RDEC's in a different (higher) locality than Detroit, and organization wide the time from DB02 to DB03 is 30 months. I have a few friends who are at TARDEC (by the way the name changed, no longer TARDEC but that's fine) and they have never heard of the 18 month progression. It is possible since we all switched to the demo not that long ago but I'm highly skeptical. If you're not positive about this, stop posting it, making the 85k of DB03 in 18 months vs 30 months is a significant difference.
I am 100% positive the liaison told me about an 18 month progression ladder. I am not 100% sure she was right, or what the details about it were.
And yeah, I know they changed their name, but TARDEC is just so ingrained in my mind at this point, it's kinda hard to stop.

Mememe

Re: TARDEC Electrical Engineering Salary

Post by Mememe »

iSmellBS wrote:
Thu Apr 25, 2019 3:04 pm
Mememe wrote:I haven't started at tardec yet, but did my site visit last summer.
One of the smart awardees already there suggested we would probably start around 60k. The liaison also mentioned something about an 18 month ladder within the db, although I cant really remember if she said anything more specific than that.
Are you positive about the 18 month thing? Not the first time you've posted that number either.

I work for another one of the RDEC's in a different (higher) locality than Detroit, and organization wide the time from DB02 to DB03 is 30 months. I have a few friends who are at TARDEC (by the way the name changed, no longer TARDEC but that's fine) and they have never heard of the 18 month progression. It is possible since we all switched to the demo not that long ago but I'm highly skeptical. If you're not positive about this, stop posting it, making the 85k of DB03 in 18 months vs 30 months is a significant difference.
FYI, thought I'd come back to this. Just hit my 18 month mark. I started at 65k (including locality). After 6 months I was raised to 71k. Now, at my 18 month mark, I just got bumped to DB3 with a salary (including locality) of 85k, which will be 87.3k in a couple days with the federal across the board raise. So the 18 month ladder was true, though I don't know if that's specific to this location.

Also, just for background, I am a software engineer in the Detroit Michigan locality who graduated via SMART with a bachelor's degree.

malarious
Posts: 101
Joined: Tue Jun 13, 2017 1:54 am
Contact:

Re: TARDEC Electrical Engineering Salary

Post by malarious »

I appreciate your coming back!

My numbers are identical to yours, but my 18 month mark (DB3) is in March!

I am wondering now what the annual review will bring. I have heard conflicting information.

EDIT for anyone wanting more in depth:

You start at GS 10 step 1, move to GS 11 step 1 at 6 months, and go to GS 12 step 1 "12 months after your first move". If you are missing training or such you fail to move right away, which pushes back the second increase. DB3 is the LabDemo band that starts at GS-12, which is the pay scale TARDEC (now GVSC) uses.

Post Reply