Bringing clean water to every faucet and cleaning it again after we use it: treatment plants, pipes, wells, and the scientists who test it.
Top pay: highest pay, longest training
Water Utility Director: Runs a city's water and sewer system: treatment plants, pipes, budgets, and the crews. Typical pay $120k.
Water Rights Attorney: Fights and negotiates over who gets to use water from rivers and aquifers, especially in the dry West. Typical pay $151k.
Mid pay: solid pay, degree or apprenticeship
Water Treatment Engineer: Designs the plants and processes that make water safe to drink and clean sewage before it returns to rivers. Typical pay $104k.
Water Resources Engineer: Plans how communities store, move, and protect water: dams, canals, stormwater, and flood control. Typical pay $99k.
Hydrogeologist: Studies water underground: how much there is, how it moves, and whether it's polluted. Typical pay $92k.
Water Treatment Plant Operator: Runs the plant that turns river or well water into safe drinking water for a whole city. Typical pay $56k.
Wastewater Treatment Plant Operator: Runs the plant that cleans sewage so it can safely return to rivers, or even be recycled into drinking water. Typical pay $56k.
Desalination Plant Operator: Runs plants that turn seawater or salty groundwater into fresh drinking water. Typical pay $65k.
Wastewater Microbiologist: Manages the trillions of microbes that do the dirty work of cleaning sewage, and tracks diseases through wastewater testing. Typical pay $75k.
Water Quality Lab Analyst: Tests drinking water, wastewater, and rivers for bacteria, metals, and chemicals. Typical pay $56k.
Water Utility Mechanic: Repairs the pumps, motors, and valves that move water and sewage through a city. Typical pay $62k.
Water Well Driller: Drills wells that supply water to farms, homes, and towns. Typical pay $56k.
Water Plant Superintendent: Runs a water or wastewater treatment plant: its operators, budget, equipment and the lab tests that prove the water is safe. Typical pay $92k.
Water Utility SCADA Technician: Maintains the sensors, radios and control computers that let a city run its water system from one control room. Typical pay $75k.
Biosolids Program Coordinator: Manages what happens to the treated sewage sludge from a city's wastewater plant, often arranging for it to be spread on farm fields as fertilizer. Typical pay $78k.
Lead Service Line Replacement Specialist: Tracks down which homes still get water through old lead pipes and organizes crews to replace them, under federal rules requiring removal. Typical pay $68k.
Water Loss Control Analyst: Uses meter and billing data to figure out how much treated water a utility loses to leaks, theft and broken meters, and where to hunt for it. Typical pay $72k.
Starter: fastest way in
Water Leak Detection Specialist: Listens to underground pipes with sensitive microphones to find hidden water leaks. Typical pay $52k.
Backflow Prevention Tester: Tests valves that stop dirty water from flowing backward into clean drinking water. Typical pay $52k.
Stormwater Inspector: Makes sure construction sites and businesses don't let mud and pollution wash into storm drains. Typical pay $54k.
Wastewater Collection Operator: Cleans and repairs the underground sewer pipes of a city, using huge vacuum trucks and high-pressure water jets. Typical pay $50k.
Water Meter Technician: Installs, tests and repairs the water meters on homes and businesses, including new smart meters that report usage by radio. Typical pay $48k.
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.