{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/electrical-and-electronic-engineering-technologists-and-technicians/", "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology", "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.", "scored_at": "2026-08-11", "model": "claude-opus-5", "occupation": { "title": "Electrical and Electronic Engineering Technologists and Technicians", "soc_code": "17-3023", "category": "Engineering", "us_employment": 95130, "median_annual_wage": 78190 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 45, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 11, "embodiment": 14, "liability_shield": 4, "trust_premium": 6, "judgment_accountability": 10 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "An 11 reflects that roughly half the week — DRC-clean layout passes, netlist checks, LabVIEW/Python test-script scaffolding, and turning captured waveform CSVs into report figures — is already automatable or nearly so, while the other half (bringing up a board that won't boot, chasing intermittent EMI, jigging a fixture for a part that has no eval board) still needs a person at the bench, which keeps it out of the 0-6 band but well short of resistant.", "embodiment": "14 lands just into hands-on because the work is physical in ways a screen can't cover — hot-air rework on 0402s and BGAs, hand-probing live boards, terminating harnesses, running loopback and continuity checks in test cells, hauling a scope to a plant floor or antenna range for field measurements — but it's mostly a bench or lab you control, not a utility pole in weather, which is what separates it from an 18.", "liability_shield": "4 because nothing about this job requires a state license: the PE seal on the drawing set and the sign-off on the safety-critical design belong to the engineer, and while an ETA/ISCET cert or IPC-A-610/J-STD-001 solder qualification may be asked for on the resume or by a customer contract, no statute makes you personally answerable for a failed board.", "trust_premium": "6 sits at the floor of relationship-bearing work: the design engineers who keep requesting you by name because you know which supplier's connectors fail and where the last three revisions bit them is real value, but the deliverable is a test report, a build, and a red-lined schematic that another competent technician could have produced, and the customer of record rarely knows your name.", "judgment_accountability": "10 is discretion inside a bounded frame — you decide the probe points, whether a marginal reading is instrument noise or a real fault, whether to pass or reject a unit against spec, and what to escalate — but the acceptance criteria, tolerance limits, and test plan come down from engineering, and the call to ship or redesign is not yours." }, "rationale": "The modal technician splits time between screen work — drafting schematics and PCB layouts in CAD, writing test scripts, logging and charting instrument data, producing test reports — and bench work: building prototypes, soldering rework, wiring test fixtures, running oscilloscopes and spectrum analyzers, calibrating equipment, and troubleshooting boards that fail for reasons no datasheet predicted. AI is already eating the documentation, data-reduction, and routine layout-checking half, but nobody has a robot that can probe a misbehaving board, spot a cold joint, or improvise a test rig. There is no license requirement here; the PE stamp belongs to the engineer, which removes the regulatory shield that protects licensed trades.", "outlook": "Documentation-and-drafting-heavy technician roles thin out over the next decade while bench-debug, calibration, and field-commissioning positions hold or grow with domestic electronics and grid buildout.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Task-mix shift: the CAD-checking, test-report writing, and data-reduction tier is genuinely automatable, and when it goes the residual job is hardware bring-up debug — probing intermittent faults, EMI/signal-integrity chasing, improvising fixtures. This is a real two-tier occupation, and the surviving tier is the one no toolchain touches.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "embodiment", "change": "Shift of employment toward field/depot work rather than lab bench: aerospace and defense sustainment, utility substation relay testing, semiconductor fab tool support, where the environment is uncontrolled and the board is inside a machine that cannot be moved. Already visible as US fab and defense buildout (CHIPS-funded sites, submarine industrial base) pulls technicians into on-site roles.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "Not a PE route, but certification-based signing authority: NETA/InterNational Electrical Testing Association ANSI/NETA ATS acceptance-testing requires certified technicians to sign test reports, and NFPA 70B (now a standard, 2023) plus NFPA 70E arc-flash studies push owners and insurers to demand a named certified technician's signature on electrical test and calibration records. If insurers or state electrical codes make NETA/NICET certification mandatory for acceptance and maintenance test sign-off, personal accountability attaches where none exists now. Similarly ISO 17025 calibration records require a named authorized signatory.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 5 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Ownership of test-evidence integrity under DO-160/DO-254, IEC 61508 SIL verification, or FDA design-verification protocols, where the technician who executed the test attests that the article and setup matched the protocol and is the named witness in an audit. Growth of functional-safety and cybersecurity-certification regimes (EU Cyber Resilience Act, UL 2900) expands the number of consequential attestation calls a technician personally owns.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 4 } ], "ceiling_note": "There is no realistic trust_premium route: buyers are firms procuring verified hardware, not consumers choosing a human, and nobody pays extra for a human-soldered prototype. The strongest levers here are certification-based sign-off and physical field work, not license capture — an unlicensed occupation adjacent to a licensed one (PE) rarely acquires its own stamp." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2019, "emp": 122550, "wage": 65260 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 115270, "wage": 67550 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 101450, "wage": 63640 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 99050, "wage": 66390 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 97420, "wage": 72800 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 92710, "wage": 77180 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 95130, "wage": 78190 } ], "from": 2019, "to": 2025, "change_pct": -22.4, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": false }, "pivots": [ { "slug": "electro-mechanical-and-mechatronics-technologists-and-technicians", "title": "Electro-Mechanical and Mechatronics Technologists and Technicians", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 55, "median_wage": 73900, "overlap": 88, "skills_to_close": [ "Installation", "Science", "Operation and Control", "Operations Monitoring" ] }, { "slug": "avionics-technicians", "title": "Avionics Technicians", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 71, "median_wage": 82280, "overlap": 87, "skills_to_close": [ "Science", "Equipment Maintenance", "Quality Control Analysis", "Installation" ] }, { "slug": "electrical-and-electronics-repairers-commercial-and-industrial-equipment", "title": "Electrical and Electronics Repairers, Commercial and Industrial Equipment", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 67, "median_wage": 74090, "overlap": 85, "skills_to_close": [ "Science", "Installation", "Operations Monitoring", "Quality Control Analysis" ] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }