Also called: Flight Recorder Specialist, Black Box Analyst
Recovers and reads the data from flight recorders, train event recorders and car computers after major crashes for the NTSB.
A damaged flight recorder arrives at the NTSB lab in Washington. You carefully dry the memory chips, pull the data, and graph the plane’s last minutes so investigators can see exactly what happened.
Estimated from federal engineer pay.
Approximate: anchored on Bureau of Labor Statistics data for a broader job group.
Bachelor's degree (4-year), about 4 years after high school. Bachelor’s in electrical or aerospace engineering.
Ways in: 4-year college, Graduate school. Training cost: $60k – $150k.
Majors to look at: Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Computer Engineering.
Growing about average. Very small federal team.
Low risk in 5 years, medium in 10. Software helps decode data; careful recovery from wreckage stays expert work.
Classes: Physics, Computer science, Calculus.
Official data: O*NET occupation 17-2072.
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.