Aerospace Manufacturing & Test

The factories, cleanrooms, and test labs where airplanes, rockets, and satellites are actually built and proven.

Top pay: highest pay, longest training

• Aerospace Plant Manager / Director of Operations: Runs an entire aerospace factory: people, schedules, safety, and quality. Typical pay $120k.
• Additive Manufacturing (3D Printing) Engineer: Uses metal 3D printers to make rocket engine parts and aircraft brackets that can't be made any other way. Typical pay $112k.
• Materials & Processes (M&P) Engineer: Chooses the metals, plastics, adhesives, and coatings used in aircraft and rockets and figures out how to process them safely. Typical pay $112k.
• Aerospace Program Manager: Owns the budget, schedule, and customer relationship for a big aircraft, satellite, or rocket program. Typical pay $165k.

Mid pay: solid pay, degree or apprenticeship

• Aerospace Manufacturing Engineer: Figures out the best way to actually build an aircraft or rocket: the steps, tools, and factory layout. Typical pay $101k.
• Aerospace Quality Engineer: Makes sure every part meets strict aerospace standards and investigates when one doesn't. Typical pay $98k.
• Aerospace Metrology Technician: Measures giant aircraft structures and tiny parts with lasers and robot probes, sometimes to a fraction of a hair. Typical pay $70k.
• Environmental Test Engineer: Shakes, freezes, bakes, and blasts hardware with noise to prove it can survive flight. Typical pay $102k.
• CNC Programmer: Writes the programs that tell computer-controlled machines how to carve metal into precise aerospace parts. Typical pay $69k.
• Aircraft Structures Assembler: Puts together the fuselage, wings, and tail of airplanes by drilling, riveting, and fastening. Typical pay $60k.
• Aerospace Production Supervisor: Leads a crew of assemblers or technicians on the factory floor. Typical pay $70k.
• Aerospace Supply Chain Planner: Makes sure thousands of parts from suppliers worldwide arrive in time to build aircraft. Typical pay $80k.
• Production Flight Line Technician: Gets brand-new airplanes ready for their first flight, testing every system on the flight line. Typical pay $80k.
• Aerospace Tool Designer: Designs the giant jigs and fixtures that hold airplane and rocket parts while they are built. Typical pay $95k.
• Aerospace Special Process (Nadcap) Auditor: Audits factories that heat-treat, weld, coat or X-ray aerospace parts. Typical pay $100k.
• Jet Engine Test Cell Operator: Runs jet engines at full power inside huge concrete test buildings to prove they work after being built or overhauled. Typical pay $70k.
• Jet Engine Borescope Inspector: Snakes tiny cameras deep inside jet engines to find cracks, burns and dents on blades without taking the engine apart. Typical pay $75k.

Starter: fastest way in

• Composite Technician: Builds parts from layers of carbon fiber and fiberglass that are lighter than metal but just as strong. Typical pay $52k.
• Aerospace Machinist: Runs lathes and mills that cut metal into precise aircraft and rocket parts. Typical pay $54k.
• Aircraft Painter: Strips, preps, and paints airplanes, including airline logos and special coatings. Typical pay $50k.
• Aerospace Electrical Assembler: Builds and installs the electronic boxes and wiring inside aircraft. Typical pay $45k.
• Aerospace Quality Inspector: Checks parts and assemblies against drawings and approves them, or stops them. Typical pay $48k.
• Autoclave Operator: Runs the giant pressure ovens that bake carbon-fiber airplane and rocket parts. Typical pay $52k.
• Aerospace Chemical Processing Technician: Dips aircraft parts in chemical baths to protect them from corrosion. Typical pay $46k.

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.