Maintenance Welder Salary
How much do maintenance welders make? Median pay is $34.00/hr ($70,720/yr) with most earning $30.00–$38.00/hr.
Our board benchmarks put the national median at $34.00/hr — about $70,720 a year at full time, with the middle half of maintenance welders earning $30.00–$38.00/hr.
What employers offer today
Our board benchmark for maintenance welders runs $30.00–$38.00/hr with a median of $34.00/hr, compiled from active listings.
Maintenance Welder pay, answered.
How much overtime do maintenance welders actually get?
More than most trades — plants break at night and on weekends, and shutdowns/outages concentrate paid hours. A maintenance welder averaging 5 hours of overtime a week clears roughly $77,085 a year at the median rate; heavy-overtime sites (24/7 operations, annual outages) push total earnings past $84,864. Shift differentials of $1–$3/hr for 2nd/3rd shift stack on top of that.
How does maintenance welding pay compare to production or pipeline welding?
Maintenance welders trade peak rates for stability. Pipeline and shutdown/turnaround welders can out-earn them during a job — sometimes dramatically, with per-diem — but the work is nomadic and gaps between jobs are unpaid. Plant maintenance welding pays a steady wage plus overtime, stays in one place, and usually includes the fabrication variety (repairs, guards, brackets, hardfacing) that production line welding lacks.
Which welding certifications matter for plant maintenance pay?
AWS D1.1 structural is the baseline employers list most. Stick (SMAW) and flux-core for repair work, TIG for stainless and sanitary lines — food, beverage, and pharma plants pay extra for clean TIG — and any ASME Section IX pressure qualification puts you in boiler and piping repair territory, the best-paid corner of plant welding. Hardfacing and machining-adjacent skills add more than an extra process cert does.
Open maintenance welder roles paying these rates
1 live listing on the board right now — most in Utah.