Career Explorer Engineering and architecture
Grows with AI
Surveyors
Make exact measurements and determine property boundaries. Provide data relevant to the shape, contour, gravitation, location, elevation, or dimension of land or land features on or near the earth's surface for engineering, mapmaking, mining, land evaluation, construction, and other purposes.
Changing faster than most: more resilient than 38% of the 831 careers we score. AI exposure is moderate (the Bureau of Labor Statistics rates it high), and US jobs are projected to change by +5.8% by 2035, faster than average. The work leans on creative vision and physical dexterity.
AI can help with many of the tasks, and demand is still growing. Being fluent with AI is the edge here.
- Median pay (2025)
- $75,440
- Job growth to 2035
- +5.8%
- Openings a year
- 3,100
- People doing it (2025)
- 52,000
- Usual route in
- Bachelor's degree, then an internship or residency
Where people already use AI for this work
- Document technical designs, procedures, or activities
- Gather data about operational or development activities
- Evaluate the quality or accuracy of data
From Microsoft Research, Working with AI (2025).
Work AI rarely helps with
- Assess characteristics of land or property
- Direct scientific or technical activities
- Analyze environmental or geospatial data
What the work looks like
- Direct or conduct surveys to establish legal boundaries for properties, based on legal deeds and titles.
- Prepare and maintain sketches, maps, reports, and legal descriptions of surveys to describe, certify, and assume liability for work performed.
- Write descriptions of property boundary surveys for use in deeds, leases, or other legal documents.
- Verify the accuracy of survey data, including measurements and calculations conducted at survey sites.
- Search legal records, survey records, and land titles to obtain information about property boundaries in areas to be surveyed.
From O*NET 31.0, US Department of Labor.
Careers using similar strengths, with a stronger outlook
- Engineering technologists and technicians, except drafters, all otherHuman edge, steady, Index 46, +2.8%
- Industrial engineering technologists and techniciansChanging shape, Index 47, +3.1%
- Biological techniciansGrows with AI, Index 65, +7.4%
- Agricultural techniciansGrows with AI, Index 66, +5.4%
Also known as: County Surveyor, Land Surveyor, Licensed Land Surveyor, Surveyor, Geodesist, Geodetic Advisor, Geodetic Surveyor, City Surveyor.
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Sources: US Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Projections 2025 to 2035; O*NET 31.0; Microsoft Research (2025); Anthropic Economic Index (2026); Eloundou and colleagues (Science, 2024); Felten, Raj and Seamans (2023). How we score. Updated 12 October 2026.