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Industrial Maintenance Technician

Keep production equipment running by maintaining mechanical, hydraulic, electrical and control systems.

Median pay
$61,170/yr
Entry path
4 years for millwright apprenticeships
Job outlook
+15%

What industrial maintenance technicians do

Industrial maintenance technicians — often called millwrights or maintenance mechanics — keep factories, warehouses and processing plants running. The role is deliberately multi-skilled: mechanical, electrical, hydraulic, pneumatic and PLC troubleshooting all in one job. It has the strongest projected growth of the classic industrial trades, largely because automated facilities cannot tolerate downtime.

Median annual pay
$61,170
$29.41 per hour
Typical range
$39,620–$90,370
10th to 90th percentile
Projected growth
+15%
2023–2033 projections
Annual openings
51,100
Growth plus replacement

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, May 2023 national wage estimates. Local pay varies substantially with union scale, prevailing wage projects and regional demand. Estimate pay for your area.

The work itself

A typical day

  • Respond to line-down calls and restore production
  • Troubleshoot PLC logic, sensors and drives
  • Execute preventive maintenance routes
  • Align, rebuild and replace rotating equipment
  • Document failures and drive out repeat causes

Where you work

  • Manufacturing plants and food processing
  • Distribution centers and automated warehouses
  • Power generation and water treatment
  • Often shift-based, including nights and weekends

Physical demands

Lifting, climbing and confined-space work around energized and moving equipment. Lockout/tagout discipline is the single most important safety habit in the role.

The honest tradeoffs

What works in your favor

  • Fastest-growing of the traditional industrial trades
  • Broad skill set makes you hard to replace
  • Indoor work with year-round, non-seasonal demand
  • Direct path into reliability engineering and plant leadership

What to go in knowing

  • Rotating shifts and mandatory overtime are common
  • High-pressure environment when a line is down
  • Requires constant learning across multiple disciplines
  • Exposure to energized equipment and stored energy

Getting in

Typical education
High school diploma or postsecondary certificate
Training route
1–2 year mechatronics program or a 4-year apprenticeship
Apprenticeship length
4 years for millwright apprenticeships
Licensing
No general license. Employers often require specific PLC and safety credentials.
How to become an industrial maintenance technicianIndustrial Maintenance Technician apprenticeships

Where the trade splits

Pay and working conditions diverge sharply by specialization. These are the paths most industrial maintenance technicians end up choosing between.

  • PLC and controls troubleshooting
  • Hydraulics and pneumatics
  • Precision alignment and vibration analysis
  • Robotics maintenance
  • Conveyor and material handling
  • Predictive maintenance and reliability
  • Millwright rigging and installation
  • Facilities and utilities

Credentials that matter

  • NCCER Industrial MaintenanceNCCER
  • Siemens / Rockwell PLC CertificationAutomation vendor
  • SMRP Certified Maintenance & Reliability TechnicianSMRP
  • Vibration Analyst Category I–IIIMobius / Vibration Institute
  • OSHA 30-Hour General IndustryOSHA-authorized trainer

Industrial Maintenance Technician field tools

The calculators this trade uses on the job. Everything runs in the browser.

Related trades

Trades that share skills, tools or career adjacency.