The Datum Report

Occupation 3113 · Associate professional occupations

Engineering technicians

Half of full-time engineering technicians in the UK earn more than £44,843 a year, and half earn less.

Engineering technicians perform a variety of technical support functions to assist engineers with the design, development, operation, installation and maintenance of engineering systems and constructions.

How people enter it

Entrants to training usually possess GCSEs/S grades. Vocational training consists either of full-time study for a BTEC/SQA award followed by two years on-the-job training, or an apprenticeship leading to a qualification at level 3 or 4. An NVQ/SVQ in Aircraft Engineering Maintenance at level 3 plus further professional qualifications are required to become a licensed aircraft engineer.

What the work involves

• plans and prepares work and test schedules based on specifications and drawings
• sets up equipment, undertakes tests, takes readings, performs calculations and records and interprets data
• prepares estimates of materials, equipment and labour required for engineering projects
• diagnoses and detects faults and implements procedures to maintain efficient operation of systems and equipment
• inspects completed aircraft maintenance work to certify that it meets standards and the aircraft is ready for operation;
• visits and advises clients on the use and servicing of mechanical and chemical engineering products and services
• provides health and safety inductions and adheres to health and safety procedures
• completes documentation such as project records, safety reports
• carries out stock takes

Also called

Aircraft engineer (licensed) · Aircraft technician · Commissioning engineer · Engineering technician · Manufacturing engineer · Mechanical technician · Wind turbine technician (construction)

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for engineering technicians, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 11 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Building and civil engineering technicians · Electrical and electronics technicians · Laboratory technicians · Planning, process and production technicians · Quality assurance technicians · Science, engineering and production technicians n.e.c.