October 2026 study
Commissioning pay against local electrician and engineer pay
Commissioning technician postings start at a median $38 an hour. That is above what nine in ten electricians earn in San Antonio and below what half of them earn in Chicago and Hillsboro. We set our posted pay data against BLS pay percentiles for electricians, HVAC mechanics and engineers in the nine metros we track.
By Czarina Tabayoyong, Founder, Critical Path Hiring. Former Amazon, AWS and Google recruiter.
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Findings
- The median electrician in Hillsboro earns $50.53 an hour and the median electrician in San Antonio earns $27.41, a ratio of 1.8 to 1 across the nine metros. Commissioning postings are travel-heavy (18 of the 21 in our pay set that state travel list 50% or more), so one posted range is offered into all of these markets.
- The $38 commissioning technician floor sits at or above the local electrician 75th percentile in San Antonio, Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth and Phoenix. In San Antonio it is above the 90th percentile, 39% above the local median.
- In Chicago (23% below) and Hillsboro (25% below), the same $38 is below the local electrician median. Against HVAC mechanics it is at or above the local median in 9 of 9 metros, Chicago and Hillsboro included.
- Data center technician postings on our operations pay page start at a median $35. That falls between the 10th and 25th percentile for electricians in Chicago and Hillsboro.
- Commissioning engineer postings start at a median $101K, below the median local electrical engineer salary in 7 of 8 metros with a BLS figure (Phoenix is the exception). In Northern Virginia and Dallas-Fort Worth, even the $159K top of the range is below the local 75th percentile electrical engineer.
Electrician pay
- 10th to 90th percentile
- 25th to 75th percentile
- Commissioning technician floor
- Data center technician floor
| Metro | Median | 75th | 90th | $38 sits | Against median |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| San Antonio | $27.41 | $31.61 | $36.38 | above the 90th percentile | 39% above |
| Atlanta | $28.20 | $37.94 | $40.39 | 75th to 90th | 35% above |
| Dallas-Fort Worth | $28.37 | $34.32 | $39.26 | 75th to 90th | 34% above |
| Phoenix | $29.43 | $37.05 | $41.73 | 75th to 90th | 29% above |
| Salt Lake City | $30.11 | $38.55 | $42.61 | median to 75th | 26% above |
| Columbus | $31.11 | $38.45 | $45.39 | median to 75th | 22% above |
| Northern Virginia | $36.50 | $49.65 | $58.45 | median to 75th | 4% above |
| Chicago | $49.21 | $57.05 | $59.65 | 25th to median | 23% below |
| Hillsboro | $50.53 | $60.26 | $64.61 | 25th to median | 25% below |
Engineer pay
Commissioning engineer postings in our commissioning pay set state a median range of $101K to $159K from 16 postings. BLS annual figures below are hourly percentiles times 2,080 hours.
| Metro | Electrical engineer median | Electrical engineer 75th | Mechanical engineer median | $101K floor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Northern Virginia | $126K | $166K | $127K | Below local median |
| Dallas-Fort Worth | $124K | $161K | $105K | Below local median |
| Phoenix | $99K | $131K | $101K | Above local median |
| Atlanta | Not released | Not released | $102K | No electrical engineer figure |
| Columbus | $102K | $127K | $101K | Below local median |
| Chicago | $114K | $134K | $102K | Below local median |
| Salt Lake City | $105K | $142K | $102K | Below local median |
| San Antonio | $104K | $148K | $105K | Below local median |
| Hillsboro | $128K | $144K | $105K | Below local median |
Hiring impact
In San Antonio, a commissioning firm posting at the national floor outbids nine in ten local electricians. San Antonio also has the largest construction demand against its trades pool in our labor gap study, 7.2% to 19.9% of local construction employment at peak, so the electricians a commissioning team recruits there are the same people the general contractors are trying to keep on site.
In Chicago and Hillsboro, the median electrician already earns about $49 to $51 an hour, so a commissioning technician offer at $38 is a pay cut for more than half of them. Teams hiring there either pay local scale or bring in travelers on per diem. HVAC mechanics are the other local pool, and $38 is above the HVAC median in both metros. In Chicago, our commissioning collision study has two tracked sites in their commissioning window in the second quarter of 2027.
A design engineer at the local median takes a pay cut at the floor of the commissioning engineer range in most of these metros. At the $159K top of the range, the offer is above the local median electrical engineer salary in all 8 metros with a BLS figure.
Method and limits
- Local pay: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, all industries, read from the BLS OES data tool on 2026-10-26. Occupations: electricians 47-2111, HVAC mechanics 49-9021, electrical engineers 17-2071, mechanical engineers 17-2141. BLS did not release an electrical engineer figure for Atlanta.
- Posted pay: the median low and high ends of stated ranges in our October 2026 commissioning (5 hourly technician postings, 16 annual engineer postings) and operations (5 hourly technician postings) sets. These are national postings, so the comparison asks what one posted range buys in each metro. Small sets: 5 and 5 postings meet our five-posting minimum and no more.
- Posted ranges are base pay. Per diem, overtime and travel pay, which commissioning roles often add, are excluded, so the gap in high-wage metros is smaller than the table shows for travelers.
- BLS figures are from May 2025 and the postings are from October 2026, so local pay has likely moved since. Union-scale metros such as Chicago and Portland pull the electrician percentiles up. Our Hillsboro market uses the BLS Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro metro.
- Download the figures as CSV.
Questions
- How much do data center commissioning technicians make compared with electricians?
- Commissioning technician postings in our October 2026 set state a median hourly range of $38 to $60, from 5 postings. The U.S. median electrician earns $30.38 an hour (BLS, May 2025). Locally it depends on the metro: the $38 floor is 39% above the median electrician in San Antonio and 25% below the median in Hillsboro.
- Do commissioning engineers make more than electrical engineers?
- At the bottom of the range, usually not. Commissioning engineer postings state a median range of $101K to $159K a year, from 16 postings. The $101K floor is below the median local electrical engineer salary in 7 of the 8 tracked metros where BLS publishes one. The $159K top is above the local 75th percentile in 6 of them.
- Where do data center commissioning jobs pay the most compared with local trades?
- In San Antonio, Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth and Phoenix, the posted commissioning technician floor of $38 an hour is at or above what three in four local electricians earn. In San Antonio it is above the 90th percentile.
Related
Commissioning pay ranges
Posted pay for commissioning engineers, managers and agents from public job postings, updated monthly.
Operations pay ranges
Posted pay for critical facilities engineers, chief engineers and technicians, updated monthly.
Construction labor gap by metro
Tracked capacity under construction against the local construction workforce.
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Czarina Tabayoyong
Founder and principal recruiter, Critical Path Hiring. Czarina recruits commissioning, MEP, power and critical facilities people for data center builds. She previously recruited cloud and data center architecture talent at AWS Professional Services, and PMO and project delivery talent for hyperscale data center campuses in Texas and Virginia.