Structural welder.
AWS D1.1. Bridges, buildings, towers. The backbone of construction welding.
Structural welding is the broadest U.S. welding category — bridges, building steel, towers, marine, racking. The certifying standard is AWS D1.1 for carbon steel and AWS D1.6 for stainless. If you've got either, you have access to the largest job pool in the trade.
Pay is steady rather than spectacular: $25–$45/hr for shop work, $35–$55/hr for field erection. The work isn't usually per-diem (most steel sub-contractors are local), but ironworker local unions push wages and benefits well above non-union rates in major metros. Union scale for journeyman D1.1 is typically $40–$60/hr in Chicago, NYC, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston.
The most active hiring zones today are the data-center build-out belt (Virginia, Texas, Arizona, Oregon), the rebuilding U.S. shipbuilding industry (Maine, Virginia, Mississippi, Washington), and the hydrogen / renewable infrastructure spike across the Midwest and South. EV battery plants and chip fabs are adding 100,000+ structural welder-years of demand through 2030.
0 active structural welder jobs
No active structural welder jobs right now. Set up an alert and we'll email you when they post.
Post a structural welder job →