Sound Engineering Technicians

Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier. An 8 reflects the split: iZotope RX, Auphonic, Adobe Enhance Speech and Dolby's automatic loudness normalisation already handle the dialogue repair, de-noising and LUFS-compliant delivery that used to fill your billable afternoons, but nothing automates coiling a snake, taping a lav under a shirt, or catching a feedback ring at 2.4 kHz before the audience does — hence mixed, not condemned.

Some physical or field component. A 12 comes from load-in and load-out work in venues you don't control — flying line arrays, running XLR under carpet, boom operating on location in wind and traffic noise — but the modal week still ends in a chair at a DAW with a control surface, which is what keeps this out of the 13-plus band where the entire job happens on a truss or in a field.

No licence, no signature requirement. A 1 is accurate because nothing gatekeeps this work: no state licence, no mandatory certification, and Dante Level 3 or Avid Pro Tools certification is a hiring signal a producer may ignore entirely — if a mix is unusable, the client re-books someone else rather than filing against a credential.

Some relationship component. An 8 recognises that repeat clients hire the engineer who already knows their vocalist's sibilance and their room's 80 Hz null, and that FOH engineers tour with specific bands for years — but album credits and session work are still awarded on demo reels and rates, and a broadcast facility will slot any qualified operator into the Tuesday shift.

Meaningful discretion. A 9 fits calls that are real but recoverable: choosing the mic pattern for a noisy interview, deciding how much gain-before-feedback you can steal for a soft speaker, judging when a take is unfixable and must be re-recorded — decisions with schedule and budget consequences, made against loudness specs and delivery standards rather than in a vacuum.