Electronic Equipment Technician

An electronic equipment technician installs, tests, maintains and repairs electronic hardware - anything from laboratory instruments and medical devices to broadcast kit, industrial control systems, test rigs and defence electronics. The work is hands-on and practical: diagnosing why a piece of equipment isn't behaving, fixing it at board or component level, and making sure it's calibrated and safe to use. Technicians typically work for manufacturers, research institutes and universities, hospitals, engineering firms, utilities, broadcasters or specialist service companies, supporting engineers, scientists or production staff who depend on the kit working.

Starting salary: £22k–£30k
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Main way in: Direct application after a degree or HND/HNC in electronic or…
They usually ask for: A degree, HND or HNC in electronic/electrical engineering…

Approximate graduate salary

Typically around £22,000–£30,000 to start, though this varies widely by sector and location - defence, aerospace, oil and gas and offshore roles tend to sit at the higher end or above it, while university, research-institute and junior workshop posts often sit lower. Field service roles may add overtime, call-out payments and a vehicle, which can make a big difference to actual take-home.

What you'd actually do

Fault-finding on equipment that has stopped working or is giving odd readings - using multimeters, oscilloscopes, signal generators and sometimes manufacturer diagnostic software to narrow a problem down to a board, a connector or a single component
Soldering and rework: replacing components on printed circuit boards, repairing cable looms, crimping and terminating connectors, and reassembling units without damaging them
Running planned preventative maintenance and calibration checks on a schedule, then recording the results so there is a traceable history for each piece of equipment
Building, wiring and testing prototypes, test rigs or small production batches to a circuit diagram or wiring schedule, often working alongside a design engineer who wants something made quickly

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Installing and commissioning equipment on site or in a lab - racking it up, connecting power and signals, configuring it and proving it works before handing it to the user
Writing up job sheets, fault reports and asset records, ordering spare parts, and keeping track of which units are in service, in repair or awaiting parts
Talking to the people who use the equipment to find out exactly what happened before it failed, which is often faster than any diagnostic tool

How graduates get in

Direct application after a degree or HND/HNC in electronic or electrical engineering, physics, mechatronics or a related subject - this is the most common graduate route, and many employers advertise technician posts openly rather than through a scheme
Apprenticeship routes (advanced or degree apprenticeships in engineering or electronics) are extremely common in this field - many technicians enter this way rather than through a degree, so graduates are often working alongside colleagues with a different background and plenty of experience
Graduate schemes at larger manufacturers, defence firms, utilities and broadcasters sometimes include technician-style placements, though these usually point towards an engineer title rather than a technician one
Moving across from a related technical job - IT hardware support, instrumentation, avionics, audio-visual or field service - where the diagnostic habits transfer

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Ex-Forces entry is a well-established route; military avionics, communications and weapons-electronics training maps closely onto civilian technician work
University and research institute technician posts are often filled by physics or engineering graduates who did lab-heavy projects; these are advertised directly by the institution

What employers ask for

A degree, HND or HNC in electronic/electrical engineering, physics, mechatronics or similar is typical for graduate-level entry - but subject matters more than in many graduate jobs, because employers want you to already understand circuits, signals and basic electronics theory
Many employers will take a BTEC Level 3, an apprenticeship or relevant experience instead of a degree, so you may be competing with non-graduates who have more practical hours than you - demonstrable hands-on work matters more than your classification
Evidence you can actually build and fix things: a final-year project involving hardware, electronics society work, repair hobbies, amateur radio, robotics, car or motorbike electrics, or a placement year in a workshop
Soldering and basic test-equipment competence; some employers will train you, others expect you to arrive able to do it. IPC soldering standards training (a widely used set of electronics assembly standards) is common in manufacturing

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Security clearance is required for defence, aerospace and some government research roles - this usually means UK residency for a set period, and it is a hard requirement where it applies
A driving licence for field-service and installation roles, where you travel between customer sites

Skills that matter

Systematic fault diagnosis

Most of the job is narrowing a vague symptom down to a cause by logical elimination rather than guessing and swapping parts.

Reading circuit diagrams, schematics and wiring drawings

You cannot repair or build to spec without being able to trace a signal path on paper and match it to the physical hardware in front of you.

Manual dexterity and care with fine work

Surface-mount components, fine connectors and delicate assemblies are easy to destroy, and a clumsy repair creates a worse fault than the original.

Confident use of test instruments

Oscilloscopes, multimeters, spectrum analysers and signal generators are the technician's main tools, and knowing how to set them up correctly is what separates a useful measurement from a misleading one.

Disciplined record-keeping

Calibration certificates, repair histories and asset records are often required for regulatory, safety or quality audits, and sloppy paperwork can invalidate otherwise good work.

Explaining technical problems to non-technical users

You will regularly need to tell a scientist, clinician or production supervisor what went wrong, how long it will take and what they should do differently, without jargon.

Electrical safety awareness

Working on live or high-energy equipment, and signing off that kit is safe to return to service, carries real consequences if done carelessly.

Putting these on a CV? We counted which skills 12,914 live graduate adverts ask for, and what to do with the answer — part of our application advice.

Where it leads

Start as a junior or trainee technician working under supervision, learning the specific equipment range and the employer's procedures - typically a year or two before you are signed off to work independently on most jobs.
Move to technician or senior technician, taking the harder faults, commissioning new installations, and often training or checking the work of juniors. Timelines here vary widely by employer and by how specialised the equipment is.
Specialise - calibration and metrology, medical equipment (clinical engineering departments in the NHS have their own structured grades), RF and communications, avionics, instrumentation and control, or field service covering a customer region. Specialising usually raises pay faster than staying general.
Branch sideways into related roles: test engineer, applications or field service engineer, technical sales support, quality engineer, or workshop/laboratory manager. Graduates with an accredited engineering degree quite often shift onto an engineer title after a few years of hands-on work.
Longer term, routes include engineering team leader or maintenance manager, or working towards professional registration with the Engineering Council - EngTech, then IEng or CEng - through a body such as the IET. Chartered status normally needs further study or an accredited degree plus documented responsible experience, and how far employers push you towards it varies enormously.

What people get wrong

“It's a lesser version of being an engineer, and a graduate would be wasting their degree.”

Technician and engineer are different jobs, not different ranks. In research labs, calibration houses and specialist manufacturers, experienced technicians have skills the design engineers simply don't have, and are relied on to make designs actually work. That said, pay ceilings in technician grades are often lower than in engineering grades, which is a fair thing to weigh up.

“You'll mostly be soldering components all day.”

A lot of modern work is diagnosis, replacement of whole modules, firmware updates, configuration, calibration and paperwork. Component-level repair still exists, especially on expensive or legacy equipment, but in many sectors swapping a board and documenting it properly is the standard fix.

“It's purely a workshop job with no contact with anyone.”

Field service and installation roles involve constant customer contact, travel and sometimes overnight stays, and even lab-based technicians spend a lot of time negotiating with users about priorities and downtime.

“The role is being automated away as equipment gets more reliable and more disposable.”

Equipment has become more complex and more software-dependent, which has shifted the work rather than removed it - there is steady demand in medical, defence, scientific instrumentation and utilities, where kit is too expensive or too safety-critical to simply throw away.

Where this varies

The title covers very different jobs depending on sector. In the NHS, equivalent work sits in clinical engineering or medical physics departments under Agenda for Change bands, with a strong emphasis on patient safety, regulation and device management. In defence and aerospace, security clearance, configuration control and strict documentation dominate, and the equipment may be decades old. In manufacturing, the focus is production test, assembly and keeping a line running, often on shifts. In universities and research institutes, you build one-off rigs for researchers and the work is varied but budgets are tight. Field service roles for equipment suppliers are road-based and customer-facing, with a company vehicle and a patch to cover. Geography matters too - clusters exist around aerospace and defence sites in the South West, South East and North West, electronics manufacturing in parts of Scotland and the East of England, and offshore-related work in Aberdeen.

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General guidance about the role across the UK market, not about any specific employer. Entry routes and requirements vary — always check the individual job advert.