Careers → Salary & Industry Statistics
Every number on this page is linked to the source it came from — US Bureau of Labor Statistics handbook pages, Indeed, and ZipRecruiter, all checked on 10 July 2026 — plus one original statistic from our own simulator's grading data that you won't find anywhere else.
Last updated: 10 July 2026
The headline numbers
$89,831
Average US PLC programmer base salary — Indeed, from 383 posted salaries (updated 4 July 2026). ZipRecruiter puts the average at $80,664.
$122,784
Average US SCADA engineer base salary — Indeed, from 503 posted salaries (updated 5 July 2026) — the highest posting-based average of the roles tracked here.
13%
Projected 2024–34 US employment growth for industrial machinery mechanics, machinery maintenance workers, and millwrights — BLS, "much faster than average", ~54,200 openings/year.
$118,780
May 2024 median annual wage for electrical and electronics engineers — BLS, with 7% projected growth 2024–34 and ~17,500 openings/year.
1.5 : 1
Siemens vs Allen-Bradley ratio among the 529 vendor-specific dialect attempts in our simulator's 10,272 graded attempts through July 2026 — from our platform's data.
$63,510
May 2024 median annual wage for industrial machinery mechanics, machinery maintenance workers, and millwrights — BLS; typical entry education is a high school diploma.
Salary by role
Posting-based averages for the main PLC-adjacent job titles in the United States, checked against live source pages on 10 July 2026. Dedicated engineering titles pay the most; the same skills under a maintenance title pay less — often for substantially similar work.
| Role | Average (US) | Reported range | Source | Career guide |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PLC Programmer | $89,831 / yr | $64,516 – $125,079 | Indeed | PLC programmer guide |
| PLC Programmer | $80,664 / yr | $68,000 – $92,500 (25th–75th pct) | ZipRecruiter | PLC programmer guide |
| PLC Technician | $85,325 / yr | $65,127 – $111,787 | Indeed | PLC technician guide |
| Controls Engineer | $92,405 / yr | $58,352 – $146,331 | Indeed | Controls engineer guide |
| Controls Engineer | $96,574 / yr | $83,500 – $108,000 (25th–75th pct) | ZipRecruiter | Controls engineer guide |
| Automation Engineer | $106,792 / yr | $71,341 – $159,858 | Indeed | Automation engineer guide |
| SCADA Engineer | $122,784 / yr | $84,161 – $179,130 | Indeed | Controls engineer guide |
| Maintenance (industrial machinery mechanics, maintenance workers & millwrights) | $63,510 / yr median (May 2024) | $30.53 / hr median | BLS OOH | Automation technician guide |
Indeed averages are computed from salaries attached to job postings over the trailing 36 months (updated 2–6 July 2026 per role page); ZipRecruiter figures are national averages and percentile bands from posting data as of 10 July 2026; the BLS figure is the official May 2024 median wage. Posting-based data typically runs ahead of survey medians. Figures checked 2026-07-10 — follow the source links for current numbers.
A caution on job-title scope: ZipRecruiter's broader “SCADA” category — which mixes engineers with operators and technicians — averages $71,012 per year ($56,000–$88,000 for the middle half), barely more than half Indeed's dedicated SCADA-engineer average. When you compare offers or salary claims, check what the title actually covers. Related guides: robot programmer and instrumentation technician.
By experience level
Salary sources don't publish clean years-of-experience bands, so the most honest verifiable proxy is the percentile spread of real salaries. Entry-level offers cluster near the 25th percentile, experienced staff near the 75th, and senior specialists at the 90th. As of 10 July 2026, ZipRecruiter's national data gives these bands:
| Percentile band | PLC Programmer | Controls Engineer |
|---|---|---|
| 25th percentile (≈ entry offers) | $68,000 | $83,500 |
| Average | $80,664 | $96,574 |
| 75th percentile (≈ experienced) | $92,500 | $108,000 |
| 90th percentile (≈ senior / specialised) | $102,500 | $121,000 |
Source: ZipRecruiter national salary pages for PLC programmer and controls engineer, checked 2026-07-10.
What moves you up the bands is consistent across sources and job ads: structured text on top of ladder logic, HMI/SCADA development, independent commissioning, a second vendor platform, and eventually safety systems. The PLC programmer career guide breaks down that skills ladder rung by rung.
Employment outlook
There is no dedicated “PLC programmer” occupation code in official statistics — PLC work is spread across the engineering, technician, and maintenance categories below. All figures are from the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook (2024 base year, projections to 2034), checked on 10 July 2026.
| BLS occupation | Median pay (May 2024) | Jobs (2024) | Growth 2024–34 | Openings / yr | Typical entry education |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Industrial machinery mechanics, machinery maintenance workers & millwrights | $63,510 / yr | 538,300 | 13% (much faster than average) | ~54,200 | High school diploma |
| Electrical and electronics engineers | $118,780 / yr | 287,900 | 7% (much faster than average) | ~17,500 | Bachelor's degree |
| Electrical and electronic engineering technologists & technicians | $77,180 / yr | 93,700 | 1% (slower than average) | ~8,400 | Associate's degree |
Two of the BLS quotes worth reading in full: employment of industrial machinery mechanics, machinery maintenance workers, and millwrights “is projected to grow 13 percent from 2024 to 2034, much faster than the average for all occupations”, and electrical and electronics engineers are projected to grow “7 percent from 2024 to 2034, much faster than the average for all occupations.” Within the engineer category, the BLS reports electrical engineers at a $111,910 median and electronics engineers (except computer) at $127,590 (May 2024).
The pattern for PLC learners: the maintenance-side occupations that PLC troubleshooting skills feed into are both the largest pool (538,300 jobs) and the fastest-growing (13%), while the engineering titles pay the most. Starting at technician and climbing toward controls engineer follows the statistics.
From our platform's data
This statistic is original to this page — it comes from our own simulator's grading logs, not from a third-party source. As of 10 July 2026, learners had run 10,272 auto-graded ladder logic attempts on our browser simulator. Most practise in the vendor-neutral IEC 61131-3 dialect, but 529 attempts were run in a vendor-specific dialect — and those show a clear demand signal:
| Vendor dialect | Graded attempts | Share of vendor-dialect attempts |
|---|---|---|
| Siemens | 247 | 46.7% |
| Allen-Bradley | 161 | 30.4% |
| Omron | 60 | 11.3% |
| Delta | 37 | 7.0% |
| Mitsubishi | 18 | 3.4% |
| Schneider | 6 | 1.1% |
Siemens attempts outnumber Allen-Bradley roughly 1.5 to 1 among learners who choose a vendor dialect — a useful counterweight to the North-American assumption that Allen-Bradley is the only platform worth learning. Our learner base is global; US job ads still skew heavily Allen-Bradley, European ads skew Siemens.
Methodology: aggregate, anonymised counts of graded program attempts on plcsimulationsoftware.com recorded through 10 July 2026, grouped by the PLC dialect selected for the attempt. No individual learner data is included. Cite this page when quoting the statistic.
The verdict
By the numbers on this page, yes: posting-based average salaries between roughly $80K and $123K across the main job titles, official 13% projected growth in the biggest adjacent occupation group with ~54,200 openings a year, and entry routes that the BLS itself lists as high school diploma or associate's degree for the technician-side roles. The work is also hard to offshore — commissioning happens where the machine is.
The realistic caveats: the engineering-technologist category is projected to grow only 1% (the growth is in maintenance and engineering, not the middle title), commissioning travel is real, and pay varies sharply by industry and region. For the role-by-role picture, start with the careers hub — it covers PLC programmer, PLC technician, controls engineer, automation engineer, automation technician, instrumentation technician, and robot programmer.
All external figures on this page were checked against these pages on 10 July 2026:
The dialect-demand statistic is from our own platform's aggregate grading data (10,272 graded attempts through 10 July 2026) and appears only on this page.
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