Find out why a machine full of electronics stopped working, and get it running again before the shift ends.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Good for a wall or a guidance counsellor.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Typical
$74,090
New technician
$46,840
Senior or field service
$105,590
The national median is $74,090 a year, and the bottom tenth start near $46,840. This is the occupation the survey calls electrical and electronics repairers of commercial and industrial equipment: industrial controls, transmitters and antennas. Fixing phones and televisions is a different, much lower-paid group.
$46,000 to $58,000
First job after a one or two year electronics program
Utilities, refineries and broadcast employers pay at the top. Small independent repair shops pay at the bottom. People who arrive with military electronics training usually skip the lowest rung entirely.
$105,590 and up
Field service technicians and industrial control specialists
Field service is where the money is, because callouts, overtime and travel allowances stack on top of the base rate. The cost is being on call and living out of a hotel some weeks.
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is an employer run registered apprenticeship that pays you from day one, leaving you to buy hand tools and a good multimeter and sit one certification exam. The high end is a two year associate degree at in district community college prices with a fuller tool kit and certification. A Pell Grant of roughly 7,400 dollars a year often covers community college tuition in full, so even the degree route can end up close to free.
File the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid). A Pell Grant of roughly $7,400 a year covers community college tuition outright for many students. Some employers also run registered apprenticeships that pay you from day one instead.
Overtime and callout pay
The role is hourly almost everywhere, so an emergency at 2am is paid, often at a premium rate.
Company vehicle and tools
Field service jobs supply the van, the fuel card and usually the test equipment.
Employer-paid training
Manufacturers run their own courses on new equipment and send you on them.
Utility and government pensions
Public power utilities and federal facilities still offer defined-benefit retirement plans.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Short and cheap. One to two years of school, then the real learning happens on the equipment.
High school diploma
Grade 12
Algebra, physics and any shop or computer class. Take apart anything broken you are allowed to take apart.
Electronics program
1 to 2 years
A one-year certificate or a two-year associate degree in electronics technology at a community college or technical school. Digital logic, circuits, instrumentation and bench time.
Entry technician job
First year
Bench repair, calibration or assisting on service calls. Expect 6 to 12 months of learning your employer's equipment before you go out alone.
Certification
1 to 3 years in
The Certified Electronics Technician credentials from ETA International (the Electronics Technicians Association) start at an associate level and move up by specialty.
Specialist or field service
3 to 5 years in
Industrial controls, broadcast transmitters, medical equipment or automation. This is where the pay jumps.
Algebra
Ohm's law and everything built on it.
Physics
Especially the electricity and magnetism unit.
Computer science
Modern industrial equipment is configured through software, not switches.
Shop or auto technology
Methodical fault finding is a habit, and it is the whole job.
There is no general license to repair electronics and no state board to answer to. Two things do require paperwork. Working on certain radio transmitters calls for a General Radiotelephone Operator License from the FCC (Federal Communications Commission). And in some states, work that ties into building wiring has to be done by a licensed electrician, so a service technician stops at the plug. Otherwise what employers check is a certification and what you can actually fix.
Community colleges
Electronics technology certificates and associate degrees, usually with evening options.
Technical institutes
Focused programs with more bench hours and direct placement into manufacturers.
The military
Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard electronics training is excellent, paid, and feeds straight into civilian service jobs.
Registered apprenticeships
Some employers run paid programs listed on the federal apprenticeship finder, so you never pay tuition at all.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Industrial controls and automation
PLC (programmable logic controller) and drive troubleshooting. The most in-demand skill in the field.
Biomedical equipment
Hospital equipment servicing. Steady, indoors, and hospitals pay well for it.
Broadcast and radio frequency
Transmitters, antennas and studio equipment. A shrinking field but a well-paid one.
Calibration and metrology
Keeping test equipment itself accurate. Quiet, precise work in labs and defense suppliers.
A driver's license and a clean record
Field service, the best-paid version of this job, requires it.
Safety training
The 10-hour course from OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration), plus arc flash and lockout training for plant work.
Good written notes
The job description literally includes keeping performance logs of repairs and calibrations, and sloppy records get people hurt.
Patience
Intermittent faults can take days. The people who find them are the ones who do not give up on day one.
The national outlook for this occupation is decline, not growth. Consumer electronics are built to be replaced rather than repaired, and a lot of equipment now swaps out a whole module instead of a component. The work that is holding up is industrial: controls, drives, instrumentation and anything where a stopped machine costs thousands of dollars an hour. If you enter this field, aim at that half of it deliberately.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
A work order and a fault nobody can explain. You talk to whoever was standing there when it quit, read the schematic, and start narrowing it down with a meter and a scope. Half the day is diagnosis and a few minutes is the actual fix. Then you write up the repair, update the log, and drive to the next site. On a plant maintenance job you also do scheduled calibrations and preventive checks nobody notices until you stop doing them.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
Several states, starting with New York in 2022, have passed right to repair laws forcing manufacturers to sell parts, tools and manuals to independent technicians. The whole argument exists because so much equipment was deliberately built to be unfixable.
A large share of working electronics technicians learned the trade in the Navy, Air Force or Coast Guard. The training is long, paid, and lands you in civilian service work with experience nobody else has at 22.
ETA International (the Electronics Technicians Association), founded in 1978, runs more than 80 vendor-neutral certifications covering fiber optics, biomedical equipment, photonics, renewable energy and communications.
Experienced technicians say the repair itself is usually minutes. The skill being paid for is narrowing a whole machine down to one failed part, which is why employers test troubleshooting rather than soldering when they hire.
Last checked September 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in United States dollars, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data and published pay scales. They vary by state, employer and experience. Tuition is for in-state students at public schools unless the card says otherwise.