Maintenance Fitter
🔩Repairs industrial machinery: strips it down, finds wear, replaces bearings and assemblies, puts it back together and restarts it. Without them the plant stops.
Prospects & pay
What the work is like
💼 Job market
🇺🇸 $66.6k a year on average · -1.9% jobs by 2035 · 4,400 openings a year
Maintenance workers, machinery — US: Census ACS 2020–24 (full-time), BLS projections 2025–35
🇬🇧 £40.7k median a year · 205,000 jobs
Metal working production and maintenance fitters — UK: ONS ASHE 2025 (full-time)
🤖 AI & automation
Sensors and AI can tell which part will fail soon, but only a person can strip, repair and rebuild a machine, and there are not enough of them.
Who it suits
Interests: 🔧 Making things by hand, ⚙️ Tech and engineering.
Key strengths: manual dexterity, strength and stamina, logic.
Where to study
- Apprenticeship Maintenance and operations engineering technician apprenticeship, Level 3 (UK)
- Apprenticeship Industriemechaniker/in (Ausbildung, DE)
- Vocational Industrial maintenance technology certificate or associate degree (US)
Key school subjects (A-level / IB / AP): Maths, Physics.
🧗 3–4-year apprenticeship at a plant with college study (UK Level 3, German Industriemechaniker Ausbildung); in the US, college or in-house training. HNC study can lead on to technician or engineer.
Things to know
🛢️ Dirt, noise, smells🌙 Night shifts and on-call
Similar careers
Not sure what to choose?
A ~100-question quiz builds your interest profile and matches you with careers and universities in Europe, the UK and the US.
Take the quiz →Scales are expert estimates; tuition and admission rules are for 2026/27 from official sources — always check the university website.