The high-steel trades: ironworkers, boilermakers, crane operators, and riggers who lift and connect the heavy stuff.
Top pay: highest pay, longest training
Ironworker General Foreman: Leads ironworker crews raising the steel skeletons of skyscrapers, stadiums, and bridges. Typical pay $110k.
Rigging Engineer / Lift Planner: Plans the giant, dangerous lifts, like setting a 500-ton reactor or a bridge span, so nothing falls. Typical pay $110k.
Mid pay: solid pay, degree or apprenticeship
Tower Crane Operator: Operates the tall cranes that build skyscrapers, from a cab hundreds of feet in the air. Typical pay $100k.
Structural Ironworker: Raises and bolts together the steel beams of buildings and bridges, often high in the air. Typical pay $62k.
Boilermaker: Builds and repairs huge boilers, tanks, and vessels in power plants, refineries, and ships. Typical pay $73k.
Rigger: Sets up cables, slings, and pulleys to lift and move heavy equipment safely. Typical pay $59k.
Mobile Crane Operator: Drives and operates truck-mounted and crawler cranes on job sites. Typical pay $67k.
Rope Access Technician: Uses climbing ropes to inspect and repair skyscrapers, dams, bridges, and wind turbines. Typical pay $68k.
Steeplejack: Climbs and repairs church steeples, smokestacks, flagpoles, and water towers. Typical pay $58k.
Curtain Wall Installer: Hangs the giant glass and metal panels that form the skin of skyscrapers. Typical pay $60k.
Precast Concrete Erector: Sets huge precast concrete pieces, like parking-garage beams and wall panels, with cranes and welds them together. Typical pay $60k.
Architectural Metals Ironworker: Installs steel stairs, railings, metal panels, canopies and decorative metalwork on new buildings. Typical pay $62k.
Tower Crane Erector: Assembles, raises and takes apart the giant tower cranes on skyscraper sites, adding new tower sections as the building grows. Typical pay $78k.
Starter: fastest way in
Ironworker Apprentice: Learns to erect steel, tie rebar, weld, and rig while earning a paycheck. Typical pay $46k.
Scaffold Builder: Builds and takes down scaffolds that let other trades work high on buildings and plants. Typical pay $48k.
High-Rise Window Cleaner: Cleans the windows of skyscrapers while hanging from ropes or swing stages. Typical pay $45k.
Metal Building Erector: Assembles pre-engineered steel buildings like warehouses, barns, churches and shops from kit parts. Typical pay $46k.
Grain Bin Builder: Builds the giant round steel grain bins on farms and at elevators, bolting together curved sheets ring by ring. 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.