Making computer chips in ultra-clean factories called fabs, where people in 'bunny suits' build circuits only a few atoms wide.
Top pay: highest pay, longest training
Semiconductor Process Engineer: Owns one of the hundreds of steps (etching, depositing, cleaning, implanting) that turn a blank silicon wafer into computer chips. Typical pay $120k.
Lithography Engineer: Runs the most expensive machines on earth, which use extreme ultraviolet light to print chip patterns smaller than a virus. Typical pay $135k.
Yield Engineer: Detective of the chip fab: finds out why some chips on a wafer don't work and fixes the cause so more good chips come out. Typical pay $120k.
Semiconductor Equipment Engineer: Keeps a fleet of multi-million-dollar fab tools running and upgrades them for better uptime and performance. Typical pay $110k.
Failure Analysis Engineer: Takes apart broken chips, layer by layer, using electron microscopes and focused ion beams to find exactly what went wrong. Typical pay $115k.
Advanced Packaging Engineer: Designs how chips are stacked, connected and sealed into packages, a hot area as AI chips combine many 'chiplets' into one. Typical pay $120k.
Mid pay: solid pay, degree or apprenticeship
Semiconductor Equipment Technician: Maintains and repairs the vacuum chambers, robots, lasers and plumbing inside chip-making tools. Typical pay $68k.
Ultrapure Water Technician: Runs the systems that make water so pure it's cleaner than lab-grade, which chip fabs use by the millions of gallons to rinse wafers. Typical pay $65k.
Gas & Chemical Systems Technician: Handles the toxic and flammable gases and chemicals that chip tools use, keeping delivery systems safe and leak-free. Typical pay $65k.
Wafer Metrology Technician: Measures wafers at each step, film thickness, line width and defects, to make sure the chips are being built right. Typical pay $56k.
Photomask Technician: Helps make the ultra-precise glass 'stencils' (photomasks) that are used to print chip patterns onto wafers. Typical pay $56k.
Semiconductor Processing Technician: Operates and monitors chip-making equipment in the cleanroom, loading wafers and keeping production moving. Typical pay $51k.
Semiconductor Test Technician: Runs automated testers that check finished chips to sort the good from the bad. Typical pay $50k.
Wire Bonder Operator: Runs machines that connect chips to their packages with gold or copper wires thinner than a hair. Typical pay $42k.
Silicon Crystal Grower: Grows giant single crystals of ultra-pure silicon, the raw material that every chip starts as. Typical pay $46k.
Probe Card Technician: Repairs and aligns probe cards, which use thousands of needles thinner than a hair to test every chip on a wafer. Typical pay $54k.
Wafer Dicing Operator: Cuts finished silicon wafers into hundreds of tiny individual chips with diamond saws and lasers. 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.