Best College Majors for Potential New Sales Engineers

If a current high school senior were considering becoming a sales engineer one day (assuming they knew what an SE was), what degree programs in college would be most beneficial?

Here in the USA, we do not have any universities that offer a BS degree in Sales Engineering, though there are now several that offer related concentrations as a minor. In some universities in Europe, they DO offer an actual SE bachelor’s degree. However, we will concentrate our discussion on the American market and American students.

But before we delve into which degree programs are the best (for an SE), it is relevant to consider the recent and future job prospects for sales engineers in the USA. As a quick guide, I like the website called “Will Robots Take my Job?”

Worth checking out; they compare SEs to many, many other job titles across multiple industries.  They do all kinds of rankings.  Spoiler alert, overall it appears that sales engineers are relatively “safe” and are looking good, at least over the next 5-6 years.

NAASE recently conducted an online LinkedIn poll about this question, and results are presented in the graph above.

This stratified view helps explain why the full sample still shows a sizable CS / Software share. Looking only at practicing SEs, the distribution shifts. SE‑only voters were less likely to pick CS / Software (about 21% vs 31% overall) and more likely to pick Mechanical / Industrial (about 59% vs 43% overall). Results for SE‑related roles sit between those two groups. This helps explain why the full sample still shows a sizable CS / Software share.

Let’s discuss these results further.

• • Unfortunately, our poll did not offer an option for a non-technical degree. Think of a Business Administration or perhaps a Marketing degree. We are aware of some SEs that come from this educational background, and they have shown that it “can” work. That said, I think this is certainly a minority of the successful SE’s today. My personal concern is that perhaps these graduates do not have the kind of technical acumen that is needed as a sales engineer.
• • Note that the “winner” in our poll is a mechanical/industrial BS degree. Mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, industrial distribution, etc. This is even more pronounced among SE-only voters, as shown in Figure 1. It clearly outpaced the #2 choice. At NAASE, we are well aware of this, but many SEs or other business professionals may assume that most SEs are in the software business- but this is not really the case. Our general findings have shown that roughly 50% of SEs are not in the software business.

• When we align each vote with a voter’s first post‑HS education, people generally recommend their own path. The tendency is strongest for Mechanical / Industrial (about 83% alignment) and Electrical / Electronics (about 60%). Alignment is weaker for CS / Software (about 57%), and No degree + cert path shows 67% alignment. In other words, mechanical and electrical respondents were most likely to recommend the field they studied, while CS respondents were least likely.
• That said, a strong choice is Computer Science/ Software Engineering- for a Major.  Certainly this can lead to a SE role in software sales and support.
• The 3^rd and 4^th choices are far behind, with 17% claiming that a bachelor’s degree is not needed, and it is preferred to instead opt for technical and other certification programs that are more directly tied to your desired role and industry. Figure 2 suggests that the ‘no degree + cert path’ votes largely came from respondents who followed that route themselves

In most of the poll options noted, it seems like the technical aspects and background needed for a (young) SE could be achieved via college courses, but still all of these persons would still need significant time and effort (and mentoring) in realizing the needed soft skills, and sales and business acumen which any good SE must have.

I think it would be best to have a technical BS degree but maybe combine that with a minor in Marketing, to at least get some of that basic knowledge and exposure before graduating.

How would you strategize with a high school senior who is thinking of a career as a sales engineer?

Methods and sample: NAASE ran a LinkedIn poll in September 2025 that closed with 58 votes. The poll asked which major one would choose today to become a Sales Engineer, with four options: CS / Software, Electrical / Electronics, Mechanical / Industrial, and No degree + cert path. For Figure 1, voters were stratified by current role using their LinkedIn job titles: SE only (including senior and lead), SE‑related (for example account executive, sales account manager, application engineer, system sales leader), and not related. For Figure 2, each vote was matched to the person’s first post‑secondary education, then mapped to the same four categories; profiles without a clear assignment were excluded from that figure. Coding was performed manually with AI check. Percentages are calculated within each group and may not sum to 100% due to rounding. The poll reflects a convenience sample from NAASE’s LinkedIn network and should be interpreted as directional rather than representative of the full SE market.