---
title: "eVTOL Pilot"
description: "Flies electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, the battery-powered air taxis now being certified to carry passengers on short city hops."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/evtol-pilot"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# eVTOL Pilot

**Category:** Transportation and Material Moving · **SOC code:** 53-2012 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 53-2012.00

Flies electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, the battery-powered air taxis now being certified to carry passengers on short city hops.

Also advertised as: Air Taxi Pilot; Powered-Lift Pilot; Electric Air Taxi Pilot; Advanced Air Mobility Pilot; eVTOL Flight Test Pilot.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $123,220 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** Not published by BLS
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $58,850 to $266,620, with the middle half between $84,540 and $190,440
- **Total US employment:** 47,630
- **Typical entry education:** Certificate
- **Preparation required:** Some preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Three: Medium Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +5.2% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 5,200 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 56/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 47,630 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $58,850 |
| 25th | $84,540 |
| 50th (median) | $123,220 |
| 75th | $190,440 |
| 90th | $266,620 |
| Mean (average) | $146,080 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| CT | $232,160 | $224,071 | 460 |
| NJ | $226,710 | $208,364 | 670 |
| NY | $177,430 | $164,407 | 1,070 |
| CA | $165,590 | $149,557 | 4,900 |
| DE | $163,600 | $163,915 | 220 |
| OH | $150,330 | $162,039 | 2,680 |
| GA | $145,100 | $150,686 | 1,020 |
| CO | $139,680 | $135,543 | 1,240 |
| TX | $137,960 | $142,143 | 4,120 |
| VT | $137,810 | $140,683 | 40 |
| PA | $134,030 | $137,365 | 530 |
| ND | $133,010 | $149,518 | 370 |
| MD | $131,210 | $125,011 | 360 |
| KY | $129,990 | $144,179 | 800 |
| WI | $129,860 | $138,009 | 1,090 |

34 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 49 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/evtol-pilot/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/evtol-pilot.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 50,400 in the 2025–2035 base year to 53,000 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 2,600 jobs, or +5.2%. Faster than average: 5.2% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 5,200 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Postsecondary nondegree award (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Some preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Three: Medium Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** Moderate-term on-the-job training.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 36.4% |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 28.6% |
| Some College Courses | 16.9% |
| Less than a High School Diploma | 15.1% |
| Post-Baccalaureate Certificate | 1.2% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 1.1% |

## What the work involves

- Fly test, demonstration and certification flights
- Perform preflight inspections and battery energy planning
- Execute vertical takeoffs, transitions and landings
- Communicate with air traffic control and ground crews
- Give engineers detailed feedback on handling and systems
- Help write flight procedures and training material
- Train other pilots on the new aircraft type

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Monitoring — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Operation and Control — importance 4.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Operations Monitoring — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Troubleshooting — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Analysis — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Transportation — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Geography — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Public Safety and Security — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mechanical — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Problem Sensitivity — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Perceptual Speed — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Control Precision — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Near Vision — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Realistic (R), Conventional (C), Enterprising (E).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| R — Realistic | 5.15 |
| C — Conventional | 4.82 |
| E — Enterprising | 3.92 |
| I — Investigative | 3.41 |
| S — Social | 2.57 |
| A — Artistic | 1.10 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ISTJ | 91.8 |
| ESTJ | 86.4 |
| ISFJ | 74.8 |
| ISTP | 69.2 |
| ESTP | 66.2 |

Best-fitting types: ISTJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Commercial Pilot](https://nuecareer.com/careers/commercial-pilot) — median $123,220
- [Airline Pilot](https://nuecareer.com/careers/airline-pilot) — median $232,140
- [Air Traffic Controller](https://nuecareer.com/careers/air-traffic-controller) — median $148,080
- [Airfield Operations Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/airfield-operations-specialist) — median $56,850
- [Aircraft Mechanic](https://nuecareer.com/careers/aircraft-mechanic) — median $79,870
- [Aviation Inspector](https://nuecareer.com/careers/aviation-inspector) — median $92,100
- [Locomotive Engineer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/locomotive-engineer) — median $81,410
- [Avionics Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/avionics-technician) — median $82,280
- [Captain, Mate, and Pilot of Water Vessels](https://nuecareer.com/careers/captain-mate-and-pilot-of-water-vessels) — median $92,460
- [Ship Engineer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/ship-engineer) — median $109,530

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/evtol-pilot