Also called: Postdoc, Postdoctoral Fellow
A recent physics PhD who spends a few years doing full-time research before landing a permanent job.
You run your own experiments or calculations in a professor's or national lab's group, write papers, mentor grad students, and travel to conferences to present results. Much of the day is building, debugging and analyzing; part of it is applying for the next job.
Postdoc pay is set by universities and labs; national lab postdocs earn toward the top of the range.
Approximate: anchored on Bureau of Labor Statistics data for a broader job group.
Doctorate (PhD), about 10 years after high school. PhD in physics (about 5-6 years after a bachelor's).
Ways in: 4-year college, Graduate school. Training cost: $15k – $60k.
Majors to look at: Physics, Applied Physics, Astronomy.
Growing about average. Postdoc positions depend on research funding; most last 2-3 years.
Medium risk for 10 years. AI speeds coding and writing papers; building experiments and doing original research stay human.
Classes: AP Physics C, AP Calculus BC, AP Computer Science.
Official data: O*NET occupation 19-2012.
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.