Know Your Worth / Career paths
Compare skills, employee pay, and freelance economics. Explore industries from optical and food to science, music, games, writing, and coaching.
577–624 of 1,030 careers
Employee references are annual US median wages for the cited BLS occupation, which may cover several career paths. Replacement targets add $15,000 for benefits and $20,000 for business costs, then divide by 1,200 billable hours a year. They show what you would need to charge, not what customers or platforms will pay. Everyday shift and gig roles show no inferred freelance rate: compare your actual worker receipts after costs and unpaid time. Annual figures are rounded to the nearest $1,000 and hourly figures to the nearest dollar. Figures are before personal taxes, with no percentage fees. Open a guide to see the source or adjust the assumptions in the calculator.
BLS · May 2025 · Computer Systems Analysts
Builds document-generation workflows from approved templates and rules, preserving traceability and review so automation does not silently replace professional legal judgment.
View career → Legal document automation developerBLS · May 2025 · Editors
Builds systems for legal teams to find reusable knowledge, approved templates, and relevant expertise while managing versioning, permissions, and professional review ownership.
View career → Legal knowledge managerBLS · May 2025 · Management analysts
Improves how legal teams organize work, vendors, technology, budgets, and reporting while keeping legal judgments and privileged decisions with authorized practitioners.
View career → Legal operations managerBLS · May 2025 · Project management specialists
Plans and coordinates legal matters or improvement projects around scope, budget, dependencies, and communication while leaving legal strategy and professional obligations with qualified practitioners.
View career → Legal project managerBLS · May 2025 · Writers and authors
Organizes legal-source research and evidence summaries for qualified reviewers, preserving jurisdiction, source date, uncertainty, and the distinction between research assistance and legal conclusions.
View career → Legal research analystBLS · May 2025 · Executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants
Coordinates legal-team administration, correspondence, scheduling, and document handling with attention to confidentiality, procedural deadlines, and the supervising practitioner's instructions.
View career → Legal secretaryBLS · May 2025 · Computer systems analysts
Implements and supports legal-team software, translating workflow needs into configuration, training, and reliable access without assuming technology can decide professional or privileged questions.
View career → Legal technology specialistBLS · May 2025 · Project management specialists
Coordinates legal-document translation through qualified language providers, version control, confidentiality, and review responsibilities while separating project administration from certified translation or legal interpretation.
View career → Legal translation project managerBLS · May 2025 · Software Quality Assurance Analysts and Testers
Tests lending software for reliable workflows, accurate statuses, access boundaries, and consistent implementation of approved rules without treating passing tests as lending-policy approval.
View career → Lending platform QA analystBLS · May 2025 · Industrial Engineers
Improve the repeatability of lens production while maintaining required optical performance. Examine process variation, inspection feedback, yield, and documentation rather than treating every rejected part as an isolated event.
View career → Lens Manufacturing Process EngineerBLS · May 2025 · Software Developers
Structure playable spaces around movement, pacing, objectives, and player understanding while testing whether intended routes and challenges remain legible.
View career → Level designerBLS · May 2025 · Market research analysts
Build customer messages around commerce events such as first purchase, replenishment, or delayed delivery while coordinating relevant data, suppression, and operational accuracy.
View career → Lifecycle commerce email specialistBLS · May 2025 · Fundraisers
Help life-science teams turn a credible research plan into a coherent funding proposal. Align scientific questions, resources, milestones, and evidence while preserving the uncertainty inherent in research outcomes.
View career → Life Science Grant StrategistBLS · May 2025 · Photographers
Plan and capture authentic-looking editorial image sets that illustrate an everyday activity while meeting a defined publication brief.
View career → Lifestyle content photographerBLS · May 2025 · Cooks
Line cooks prepare an assigned station, cook orders, and coordinate timing with the rest of the kitchen. Their value comes from consistent execution during service and reliable setup, communication, and closing work.
View career → Line cookBLS · May 2025 · Training and development specialists
Helps clients practice attentive listening, useful clarification, and accurate reflection in work or everyday conversations without presenting coaching as psychotherapy or relationship treatment.
View career → Listening skills coachBLS · May 2025 · Technical writers
Supports legal proceedings through document organization, hearing preparation, technology coordination, and reliable retrieval of authorized evidence under qualified legal-team supervision.
View career → Litigation support specialistBLS · May 2025 · Sound engineering technicians
Prepare and operate live audio systems so performers and audiences receive clear, dependable sound.
View career → Live sound technicianBLS · May 2025 · Camera operators, television, video, and film
Coordinate live video sources, run-of-show cues, and fallback plans so a broadcast remains understandable when circumstances change.
View career → Livestream producerBLS · May 2025 · Logisticians
Coordinates shipment capacity and load information under approved operational procedures, ensuring qualified personnel own safety-critical loading decisions and equipment limits.
View career → Load planning coordinatorBLS · May 2025 · Couriers and Messengers
Local couriers collect and deliver documents or small parcels. Handoffs, waiting, failed collections, and travel between jobs all affect the return on a run.
View career → Local courierBLS · May 2025 · Editors
Review localized copy for clarity, consistency, context, and functional fit while coordinating language questions with qualified translators and the source-content owner.
View career → Localization editorBLS · May 2025 · Sound engineering technicians
Capture intelligible production dialogue while managing changing locations, unwanted noise, microphone placement, and take records.
View career → Location sound recordistBLS · May 2025 · Logisticians
A logistics consultant improves how goods move between suppliers, facilities, and customers. They examine routing, handling, service failures, and cost drivers to recommend changes that are workable under real delivery and capacity constraints.
View career → Logistics consultantBLS · May 2025 · Data Scientists
Make machine learning models usable within dependable software systems. The work connects training, deployment, monitoring, and recovery so a model can operate within practical latency, privacy, and cost constraints.
View career → Machine Learning EngineerBLS · May 2025 · Network and Computer Systems Administrators
Develop operational workflows for deploying and monitoring evaluated models. Connect software releases with model versions, data assumptions, and rollback evidence while recognizing that changing real-world inputs can invalidate earlier evaluation results.
View career → Machine Learning Operations EngineerBLS · May 2025 · Software Developers
Create shared infrastructure that helps teams develop, deploy, and evaluate models consistently. Connect reproducibility, access, resource controls, and user experience while preserving clear ownership of models and operational decisions.
View career → Machine Learning Platform EngineerBLS · May 2025 · Electrical Engineers
Choose imaging geometry and illumination that make an inspection task feasible. Establish observable defect examples and practical image criteria before a team commits to complex recognition software.
View career → Machine Vision Optics SpecialistBLS · May 2025 · Management analysts
A management consultant helps leaders make a difficult organizational or commercial decision. They structure the question, test explanations against evidence, and turn analysis into a recommendation with clear options and consequences.
View career → Management consultantBLS · May 2025 · Cost Estimators
Estimate manufacturing costs from documented product, process, and volume assumptions. Explain tooling, material, labor, and uncertainty so stakeholders can compare options without treating a preliminary estimate as a supplier commitment.
View career → Manufacturing Cost EstimatorBLS · May 2025 · Database Architects
Build reliable manufacturing data flows with explicit asset identifiers, timestamps, and quality flags. Preserve context needed to compare events and measurements without silently treating incomplete machine records as accurate process history.
View career → Manufacturing Data EngineerBLS · May 2025 · Industrial Engineers
Build models that connect manufacturing records with a defined physical process question. Evaluate data quality, model assumptions, and validation needs rather than labeling every animated process diagram a predictive twin.
View career → Manufacturing Digital Twin EngineerBLS · May 2025 · Project management specialists
Coordinate manufacturing system or process implementations across engineering, operations, quality, and vendors. Track prerequisites and handover evidence while preserving qualified responsibility for equipment changes, worker safety, and production release.
View career → Manufacturing Implementation Project ManagerBLS · May 2025 · Industrial Engineers
Improve production workflows through process evidence, measured variation, and controlled trials. Connect throughput, quality, and resource constraints while distinguishing a proposed improvement from an approved manufacturing change.
View career → Manufacturing Process EngineerBLS · May 2025 · Management analysts
Turn orders, capacity, material availability, and approved process constraints into production planning evidence. Compare schedule tradeoffs and highlight missing information rather than promising that a single optimized plan can prevent every delay.
View career → Manufacturing Production Planning AnalystBLS · May 2025 · Industrial Engineers
Investigate equipment reliability and recurring production disruptions using authorized maintenance records. Explain failure classifications, data limits, and competing causes before recommending qualified review of maintenance or equipment changes.
View career → Manufacturing Reliability EngineerBLS · May 2025 · Industrial Engineers
Evaluate supplier process and inspection evidence for manufacturing requirements. Trace quality concerns to documented records and review questions while distinguishing an advisory assessment from authorized supplier qualification or product release.
View career → Manufacturing Supplier Quality EngineerBLS · May 2025 · Technical writers
Develop clear manufacturing documentation from approved engineering and process sources. Maintain terminology, revision history, and review traceability so simplified work instructions do not conceal critical assumptions or unauthorized changes.
View career → Manufacturing Technical WriterBLS · May 2025 · Electrical Engineers
Develop repeatable product or process tests that support manufacturing decisions. Connect test fixtures, measurement quality, and acceptance criteria while documenting invalid setups and responsibilities for release or process changes.
View career → Manufacturing Test EngineerBLS · May 2025 · Operations Research Analysts
Analyzes maritime transport information, schedules, costs, and service uncertainty to support planning without confusing published estimates with guaranteed vessel or port performance.
View career → Maritime logistics analystBLS · May 2025 · Market Research Analysts
Evaluate how marketing activity relates to customer behavior and business results. Marketing analysts reconcile campaign data, examine acquisition and retention, and explain where attribution methods cannot support a confident spending decision.
View career → Marketing AnalystBLS · May 2025 · Market research analysts
A marketing automation specialist builds reliable workflows that connect customer data and communications. The role reduces manual handoffs by making triggers, segmentation, routing, and exceptions understandable and maintainable for the team.
View career → Marketing automation specialistBLS · May 2025 · Management analysts
Organize a seller's marketplace information, operational questions, and support escalations while distinguishing account administration from sales promises or platform decisions.
View career → Marketplace account specialistBLS · May 2025 · Fitness Trainers and Instructors
Develops discipline-specific movement, practice habits, and respectful participation through structured instruction appropriate to the style, setting, and learner's experience.
View career → Martial arts instructorBLS · May 2025 · Sound engineering technicians
Prepare finished mixes for release through level consistency, sequencing, technical checks, and reliable export delivery.
View career → Mastering engineerBLS · May 2025 · Materials Scientists
Study how material structure and processing affect useful properties. Compare characterization evidence and application constraints while distinguishing laboratory findings from claims about reliable industrial performance.
View career → Materials Research ScientistBLS · May 2025 · Health Education Specialists
Helps households organize shopping and meal preparation around preferences, time, budget, and general food guidance without prescribing treatment for health conditions.
View career → Meal planning coachBLS · May 2025 · Cooks
Meal prep cooks produce consistent batches, portion meals, and organize kitchen work against an agreed menu and collection schedule. Compare prepared-food work in a commercial or shared kitchen, including culinary settings such as PREPPED!, with employee shifts and independently priced meal services.
View career → Meal prep cook