Solar salaries recap
In our prior posts about Solar Salaries, we highlighted that solar jobs pay about ~30% more than the nation-wide average but have a wide distribution that varies by the job category. Another key factor beyond job category that obviously influences your earnings are your skills and experience level. In this post, we’ll dive into how pay varies for entry-level, mid-level, and experienced positions from our Work In Solar Job Board data.
What are the differences between entry-level, mid-level, and experienced solar jobs?
The solar industry has grown to more than 250,000 full-time working professionals over the past decade. While there are many experienced professionals working in solar, there are also many solar employers who are hiring and training new employees today. You will see thousands of job postings for solar installers and solar sales professionals that will offer some form of on-the-job training that will allow you to develop the skills to start contributing. Other more technical roles such as electricians or those working in manufacturing may have apprenticeship or intern positions.
Here is some guidance for how to think about the experience categories you’ll see on the job board and key differences and requirements we’ve seen highlighted across employers that are looking for entry vs. experienced positions:
Entry-level Solar Job Postings
These are jobs that typically do not require any prior work or solar experience. Some entry-level jobs we have tagged on our job board may require basic experience for the category of job (e.g. for a Solar Installer, you may need some prior construction site experience), while others will offer training.
For more technical or complex roles, you will see Internship or Apprenticeship options (e.g. Electrical Apprenticeship or Project Development internships). With any entry-level job, it is important to demonstrate your interest and excitement for the industry and the position itself.
Mid-level Solar Job Postings
Mid-level jobs either require a few years of solar industry experience (e.g. a mid-level sales rep may require 3 years working in solar sales) or a few years of direct job experience (e.g. a Solar Electrician who has been a traveling journeyman for 3 years).
If you do not meet most of the requirements on these job postings (and the postings do not explicitly call out that they are willing to accept less experienced/entry-level workers), there is a very small chance you will hear back from the employer as they are looking for someone who will not need significant training to be able to jump into the job on day 1. You do not need to check all the boxes on the requirements, but should feel confident that you know of or can do most of the things listed on the job posting.
Experienced Solar Job Postings
Experience jobs are those for professionals who have been in the industry for more than a handful of years and have significant domain or skill expertise. Experienced jobs will typically involve managing a team or multiple teams (e.g. a Head of Sales position or a Foreman). Experienced opportunities can also be for professionals with advanced degrees (e.g. a Master’s or PhD in Materials Science for a manufacturing position), who are making very significant contributions to the company that apply across the customer base.
Note on Overlapping Experience Postings
Note that, given the challenges in hiring solar workers today, some employers offer positions that may be either entry-level or mid-level. Ideally, they are looking for someone who has solar experience, but are willing to invest in training new hires given they need talent to help them keep growing.
For example, Sun Light & Power has an open position now for a “PV Installer I/II.” If you apply to these roles, you’ll need to emphasize your relevant experience as much as possible (e.g. you’ve worked on a construction site or helped your uncle roof his house) and eagerness to grow and learn in the solar industry. Earning your NABCEP certification will help you stand out from other applicants that don’t have direct solar experience.
Solar Salary Distribution by Experience
We’ll be using the same box plots from our prior blog post (check it out if you need a refresher on how to interpret the charts; we’ll include the table below for reference as well) to show the distribution across these roles.
Solar Salary Insights by Experience
Entry-level and mid-level jobs have the same extremes in their minimum and maximum salaries of ~$13 to ~$90 per hour. These are the outliers for these types of job postings and you should interpret the upper end as the max you could possibly earn.
If you are earning between the 25th and 75th percentile as an entry-level worker, you can expect get paid $22 to $37 per hour
Note that there is a small gap between the 25th and 50th percentile of only $4 / hour for entry-level positions. This is due to a high concentration of jobs that are all earning in the low $20s per hour
While mid-level jobs have a minimum salary similar to entry-level jobs, more than 75% of mid-level solar workers are earning much more than entry-level workers ($30+ per hour vs less than $26 per hour). 50% of all mid-level jobs earn more than 25% of entry-level jobs ($38+ per hour for mid-level workers above the 50th percentile vs. $37+ per hour for entry-level jobs above the 50th percentile)
Experienced solar workers have a minimum of $20 per hour. These are generally experienced solar installers working in rural areas where salaries are typically lower given the cost of living.
Half of all experienced solar workers earn more than $47 per hour. This is equivalent to a $100,000 annual salary without any overtime included (solar jobs can often include overtime / weekend earnings opportunity if you are willing to put in the extra hours).
Below is the tabular view of the salaries for easy reference
Conclusion
What are your takeaways as you look at the ranges within these experience levels? We hope this post has given you a better idea of what your current earnings potential is given your experience level in the industry. Subscribe to our blog post and let us know if you have any questions or requests for other ways to analyze this data. As with any data, there are many more ways we can slice and dice it to give you a better picture. By reading this post and our prior post, you’ll be able to get a great sense of the ranges by both experience and category.
In following posts, we’ll share some more data on the compensation distribution for some of the most common jobs in solar today. Stay tuned!