Also called: Print Farm Technician
Keeps rows of dozens or hundreds of desktop 3D printers running to make products in bulk.
You walk a room humming with 80 printers, pulling finished parts off build plates, loading new filament and starting the next jobs from a computer queue. When one fails with a 'spaghetti' mess, you clean it up and figure out why.
Estimate.
Approximate: anchored on Bureau of Labor Statistics data for a broader job group.
High school diploma, about 0 years after high school. High school; many start as hobbyists.
Ways in: On-the-job training, Self-taught. Training cost: Get paid while you train.
Growing faster than average.
Medium risk in 5 years, high in 10. Auto-ejecting printers, robots and farm software let one person run more printers; fewer operators needed.
Age 16+. One way to start: Apply to local print farms and Etsy print shops; show prints from your own printer if you have one
Classes: Computer science, Shop class.
Official data: O*NET occupation 51-9199.
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.