Caring for people who have died and the families they leave behind, from funeral homes and crematories to cemeteries and death investigation.
Top pay: highest pay, longest training
Funeral Home Owner: Owns a funeral home, often a family business passed down for generations, and leads its staff and community reputation. Typical pay $120k.
Forensic Pathologist (Medical Examiner): A physician who performs autopsies to determine how and why people died, often testifying in court. Typical pay $280k.
Mid pay: solid pay, degree or apprenticeship
Funeral Home Manager: Manages the operations, staff, budgets and compliance of a funeral home or group of funeral homes. Typical pay $77k.
Medicolegal Death Investigator: Goes to death scenes for the medical examiner or coroner to document the body and gather evidence. Typical pay $64k.
Cemetery Manager: Runs a cemetery's sales, burials, grounds crew, records and long-term maintenance. Typical pay $68k.
Preneed Funeral Counselor: Helps people plan and pay for their own funerals in advance. Typical pay $60k.
Mortuary Science Instructor: Teaches embalming, restorative art, grief psychology and funeral law at a mortuary college. Typical pay $65k.
Green Burial Ground Manager: Runs a natural cemetery where bodies are buried without embalming or concrete vaults, often in protected forest or meadow. Typical pay $60k.
Body Donation Program Coordinator: Manages programs where people donate their bodies to medical schools for science and education. Typical pay $58k.
Hospice Bereavement Coordinator: Supports families for over a year after a loved one dies in hospice care. Typical pay $58k.
International Funeral Shipping Coordinator: Arranges flights, consulate paperwork and airline rules to send a person who died away from home back to their family, often in another country. Typical pay $55k.
Cemetery Mapping Technician: Uses GPS, drones, GIS software and ground-penetrating radar to map graves and find unmarked burials in old cemeteries. Typical pay $55k.
Starter: fastest way in
Funeral Director: Arranges funerals, handles paperwork and legal permits, and guides families through decisions after a death. Typical pay $50k.
Embalmer: Prepares bodies for viewing by disinfecting, preserving and restoring them. Typical pay $52k.
Restorative Artist: Uses wax, cosmetics and sculpting to restore the appearance of people who died from accidents or illness so families can say goodbye. Typical pay $52k.
Crematory Operator: Operates cremation equipment and handles cremated remains carefully and respectfully. Typical pay $41k.
Death Doula: Provides non-medical emotional and practical support to dying people and their families. Typical pay $35k.
Mortuary Transport Technician: Picks up people who have died from homes, hospitals and nursing homes and brings them to the funeral home. Typical pay $40k.
Funeral Attendant: Sets up rooms, greets guests, drives vehicles and assists at funerals and visitations. Typical pay $35k.
Pet Cremation Technician: Cares for pets that have died, performs pet cremations and helps grieving owners. Typical pay $37k.
Memorial Stone Engraver: Designs, cuts and engraves headstones and memorial monuments. Typical pay $45k.
Cemetery Groundskeeper: Prepares graves, operates backhoes, and keeps the grounds of a cemetery beautiful. Typical pay $38k.
Alkaline Hydrolysis (Aquamation) Technician: Operates equipment that uses water and alkali instead of fire to gently reduce a body to bone, a greener form of cremation. Typical pay $40k.
Funeral Home Aftercare Coordinator: Follows up with families after funerals to help with grief resources, death certificates, and paperwork. Typical pay $40k.
Disinterment Technician: Carefully digs up and moves buried remains when families relocate a grave, cemeteries are moved, or courts order an exhumation. Typical pay $46k.
Burial Vault Setter: Delivers heavy concrete burial vaults to cemeteries, sets them in the grave, and sets up the tent, chairs and lowering device for the graveside service. Typical pay $44k.
Human Composting Technician: Runs the vessels that gently turn a body into soil over about two months, a new legal alternative to burial and cremation in several states. 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.