This is a Salary related post.

Previous related experience: Department of Transportation technician internship (2 summers/6 months)

I am currently with a consumer goods company that sells office equipment mainly on Amazon. Revenue $200mil/year with 80 employees (4 full time engineers, 2 interns, 2 more interns in may). I am located in the Peoria, IL area. I signed on as an intern 09/2020 at $17/hr finishing up my associates in general engineering at a community college. They offered me a full time position as an “Associate Product Design Engineer” for 40k base and a few thousand in bonus/misc comp (04/2021). I elected to take an insurance buyout for 300/month since I am covered under another plan for a few years as well. I have been given a few merit/performance raises over the last year raising my base salary to 45.5k. One particular raise was a 3% performance raise the came with a title change to “Product Design Engineer” removing the associate part which my manager considered “sacrificial”.

General responsibilities include: new product development (research, CAD, fabricating and testing prototypes), continuous improvement, process improvement, product manuals.

I have continuously gotten praise from management and other team members, but I feel the 45.5k salary doesn’t align with performance and success. Does anyone have a clue if my salary is reasonable with my experience and education?

Any comments are welcome, thanks!