Designs golf courses: every hole, bunker, green, and drainage line.
You walk 200 acres of raw land with a topo map, imagining where each fairway should bend. Months later you ride a bulldozer with the shaper, adjusting the slope of a green by inches.
Big-name designers earn far more; most work in small firms.
Approximate: anchored on Bureau of Labor Statistics data for a broader job group.
Bachelor's degree (4-year), about 10 years after high school. Usually a landscape architecture degree plus years shaping courses under an established designer.
Ways in: 4-year college, On-the-job training. Training cost: $15k – $60k.
Majors to look at: Landscape Architecture, Turfgrass Science, Civil Engineering.
Growing slowly. Tiny field; renovation of older courses keeps it busy.
Low risk for 10 years. Drones and AI terrain models speed routing studies; walking the land and shaping greens with crews stay human.
Classes: Earth science, Studio art, Drafting CTE class.
Career Universe is an early version. Pay, training and AI-risk figures are estimates to start your own research, not verified facts. The research was written with AI research assistants, checked by validation scripts and spot-checked by hand. Check anything important with schools, employers and official sources. How the numbers work.