Skilled trades
What does a Wind Turbine Technician do?
Installing and repairing the things buildings and equipment depend on, mostly on site and mostly with your hands.
What the day is like
- Outside, in the weather.
- Tools, materials, your body.
- Largely on your own.
- Right or wrong, to a standard.
- Answerable for your own work.
The facts
- Pay
- $64,120 a year, median
- Wind Turbine Technicians, May 2025
- Usually needs
- Postsecondary nondegree award
- A year or two, often while earning something.
- Jobs
- +30% projected change in jobs, 2025-2035 projections
- Demand looks growing fast
What is good about it
- You answer for your own work rather than for other people, which suits more people than admit it.
- You can see what you did at the end of the day.
What people find hard about it
- Climbing and confined spaces
- Working away from home
- Being on call in bad weather
Fear of heights rules this out, and no amount of training changes that.
Will machines take this job?
Hard for machines to take over. Physical work in changing spaces is the hardest kind for machines to take over; the paperwork around it is not.
How to find out whether it suits you
Take a height-safety taster day and see how you feel about the climb.
Would this actually suit you?
CareerDNA works that out from what you choose rather than from what you say about yourself: two minutes of choosing between real jobs, a few puzzles, and some questions about what you are like. It is free, it saves as you go, and it will tell you plainly where the answer is thin.