Even for senior engineers, job searches can be confusing, frustrating affairs. When you're a junior engineer looking for your first job, it can feel like you're flying blind.

You may be armed with general notions about the engineering job market. Engineers are in demand, salaries are relatively high, unemployment is low, and more. What you might not have is context on what finding your first job will actually look like. How many companies should you be applying to? What kind of starting salary is normal? What roles should you even be applying for?

We analyzed thousands of first-time engineering hires over the last 18 months to answer all of the above and more. Below we've broken down the data.

1. How many jobs should I apply to?

Short answer: As many as it takes.

This is a broad question that depends on your criteria for jobs. For example, if you're only interested in hardware engineering jobs in Reno, you're dealing with a very limited talent pool and job market. That being said, if we zoom out to the national level, the average U.S.-based software engineer with zero years of experience applies to 23 jobs before getting hired.

Of course, there are a number of factors that will influence this number:

• The types of companies you are interested in
• The array of roles you are open to
• Any VISA sponsorships or other special considerations you might need

If you have applied to 23 jobs without getting hired, that does not mean your job search has been a failure—23 is just the average—and if you've yet to apply to 23 jobs, it's way too early to begin feeling worried.

Also, this isn't a directive to apply to 23 jobs today. This should simply serve to set some expectations for your job hunt.

2. What kind of companies do I have the best odds with?

Note: Do not confuse this question with “What kind of company do I most want to work at?”

Based on our hiring data, early stage companies are more open to hiring engineers with zero years of experience. The actual breakdown of companies, segmented by size, posting engineering jobs that are open to candidates with zero years of experience looks like this:

At the same time, while you may have more job options among companies with 1 - 10 employees, their youth should compel you to ask a few questions before deciding to join, namely:

• Does the company have senior talent to mentor you?
• Is this company in a financial position to offer you a livable salary?
• Do you want to work in a typically less structured, but freer early-stage environment?

Early stage companies are a high-risk, high-reward proposition. The vetting processis even more crucial when you're considering joining a company at this stage.

3. Which roles are the most open to junior-level candidates?

Maybe you aren't picky about role specialization or which part of the stack you spend your time working on. In that case, the natural question becomes: What kind of role is most open to hiring inexperienced engineers?

Note: We use the catchall "General" for job listings that do not specify a particular engineering role, and instead hire for a general "Software Engineer."

There are two big takeaways here.

First, full-stack roles are the second most common role junior-friendly role, coming only after general engineering roles. Full-stack roles are more common at early stage startups, and U.S.-based early stage startups are more likely to hire junior engineers.

Second, roles that are more concerned with infrastructure—systems engineers and DevOps roles, for example—are the least likely to hire someone with no experience.