The Datum Report

Occupation 3120 · Associate professional occupations

CAD, drawing and architectural technicians

Half of full-time cad, drawing and architectural technicians in the UK earn more than £35,221 a year, and half earn less.

CAD, drawing and architectural technicians design and prepare technical drawings, plans, maps, charts and similar items and install, operate and maintain 3D printers.

How people enter it

Entrants usually possess GCSEs/S grades, BTEC/ SQA awards or another appropriate certificate/diploma or A levels/H grades. Further training consists of courses of study and supervised practical experience.

What the work involves

• examines design specification and technical information to determine general requirements
• considers the suitability of different materials with regard to the dimensions and weight and calculates the likely fatigue, stresses, tolerances, bonds and threads
• prepares regulatory and statutory applications
• monitors health and safety in design and contributes to design stage risk assessment
• prepares design drawings, plans or sketches using CAD and traditional methods and checks feasibility of construction and compliance with health and safety regulations
• prepares detailed drawings, plans, charts or maps that include natural features, desired surface finish, elevations, electrical circuitry and other details as required
• arranges for completed drawings to be reproduced for use as working drawings
• installs, maintains and repairs 3D printers and assists in the development of CAM plans and the operation of 3D printers

Also called

3D Printing Technician · Architect’s assistant · Architectural design assistant · Architectural technician · CAD designer · Cartographer · Design technician · Draughtsman

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for cad, drawing and architectural 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. 10 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