Utility meter company to add 301 jobs in Durham (Average pay $94,927 in North Carolina)

Utility meter maker Sensus plans to add 301 jobs in Durham County and invest $4 million in its facility there by 2019.

The company can qualify for up to $4.7 million in state financial incentives if it meets the hiring and investment targets over 12 years, according to the office of Gov. Roy Cooper. Sensus plans to expand its operations at Keystone Technology Park on Davis Drive in Durham County, where the company has manufacturing, research and development and general office space.

Raleigh-based Sensus already employs 684 people at its Raleigh headquarters and in Durham County. Sensus employs more than 1,700 in the United States and about 3,600 globally and specializes in smart metering, smart streetlights, network communications technologies and advanced data analytics for water, gas and electric utilities.

The company says it plans to hire hardware engineers and software engineers, supply chain managers and technical support engineers in product development, customers support and supply chain management.

The jobs will pay an average annual salary of $94,927. The current average wage in Durham County is $67,537.

The office of N.C. Governor Roy Cooper said the state's Economic Investment Committee on Tuesday approved $3.5 million in Job Development Investment Grants for Sensus if the company meets hiring targets.

The company’s JDIG agreement also calls for nearly $1.2 million from the state’s Industrial Development Fund to finance necessary infrastructure upgrades.

Sensus, which traces its origins to the 19th-century, established its Raleigh headquarters in the 1980s. The company was acquired in 2016 by Xylem, a Rye Brook, New York-based water technology company that employs more than 16,500 people globally.

what kind of qualifications are needed to get a job like this? If anyone has knowledge of this job/field would love to hear it...My son just got his associates but now he is trying to figure out what he should get as far as a bachelors and I want to guide him ...he is open to anything except stripping lol.

Electrical engineering or Computer engineering degree will be required for the best paying jobs. A business degree would be good qualification for supply chain and customer support jobs, even though the lower level ones may not require a four-year degree. It’s still a good differentiator as there will be strong competition. Tech support jobs may have an “engineer” title but often times those working in them are not degreed engineers but have some combination of experience and education that qualifies them. For example a 2 year degree in electronics technology plus some sales or marketing experience would be common. These are typically customer-contact people for technical questions so good communications skills are a real plus, of course that’s true in any job, as if fluency in common software apps.

Good luck to your son, it’s great to be able to see jobs like this available again, as many of us who worked in similar industries were afraid Obama did so much damage they wouldn’t be for a long time.

It might be useful to contact the HR department at similar electronics or computer type manufacturers in your area and ask for the opportunity for your son to have an “informational interview”. That’s a way to get some sense of what kind of jobs might be available and whether they are a good fit.

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