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Key statistics

The identity block — every fact is canon, none is generated.

5 of 8

Track

Support

Family rungs priced

S1 · S2 · S3 · S4 · S5

53-0000

manufacturing

Coordinates

3 / 4 spaces

pay@2 · 2026-07

What this role is

Serves as the most experienced hands-on specialist coordinating picking, packing, and shipping activity across a warehouse shift or zone. At the Principal Support Specialist (S5) level, the role owns function-wide support practice, program-level and systemic support problems, and drives support strategy across the function. Subject-matter authority; shapes the practice.

What this level does

Design and document new receiving, cycle-count, slotting and put-away procedures for the DC, and drive their adoption across shifts and commodity groups
Specify and pilot technology- and procedure-based solutions (RFID capture, WMS configuration changes, scan workflows) to raise associate productivity and data accuracy
Own end-to-end WMS process integrity for the facility, defining the checks on error logs and output reports that keep inventory records reliable
Act as the facility's procedural authority and working lead, training staff and facilitating peer execution on the most complex, non-standard flows
Resolve the most complex cross-facility exceptions and represent DC-floor process expertise when new layouts, vendors or systems are introduced

Knowledge applied: Highly skilled in DC-floor process; contributes to the creation of new receiving, count, slotting and WMS-workflow procedures within the facility.
Complexity & problem solving: Develops new methods and technology-based solutions (RFID, WMS configuration) and resolves the most complex data-integrity and cross-facility exception issues.
Collaboration & interaction: Acts as working lead and procedural authority; trains staff, facilitates peer execution and influences how new layouts, vendors and systems are adopted.
Typical experience: 6+ years; expert in distribution-center operations.

Skills at this level

Order Picking & Fulfillment: — Selects and retrieves products from warehouse locations against a pick list, then sorts, packs and labels them so each customer order ships accurately and on time.
WMS Transaction Processing: — Records receiving, put-away, picking, cycle-count and shipping movements in the Warehouse Management System so that on-hand quantities and location data stay accurate to the physical stock.
Receiving & Discrepancy Reconciliation: — Verifies inbound product against the purchase order and vendor packing slip, and investigates and resolves short, over or damaged shipments by correcting the WMS record and working with the vendor.
Cycle Counting & Inventory Accuracy: — Performs scheduled counts on commodity groups, traces variances through WMS transaction history to root cause, and applies the adjustments that keep inventory records reliable.
Forklift & Warehouse Equipment Operation: — Operates forklifts, pallet jacks, scanners and other machinery under required certification to put away, replenish and move product safely between reserve and pick locations.
Slotting & Space Planning: — Designates pick slots and reserve locations by commodity group and plans DC layout ahead of promotional activity and inbound fluctuation to improve flow and storage density.
Shipping, Packing & Labeling: — Packs, labels and stages inbound and outbound freight to shipment specification, ensuring the right product, quantity and documentation move to the correct dock and carrier.
Vendor & Carrier Coordination: — Schedules inbound appointments and acts as day-to-day contact with drivers, vendors and transportation companies on delivery timing, paperwork and exceptions.
WMS Data-Integrity Troubleshooting: — Works error logs and system output reports to identify recurring data-integrity problems in the WMS and determines the corrective procedure that keeps stock records accurate.
DC Process Design & Improvement: — Creates and documents new receiving, count, slotting and workflow procedures and pilots technology- and procedure-based solutions such as RFID capture to raise productivity and accuracy.
Working-Lead Guidance: — Assigns work to pickers, packers and receivers, checks their method against procedure, and trains and guides less-experienced staff without holding formal supervisory authority.

Model-authored from 14 retrieved sources, then adversarially reviewed by an independent judge panel and held to a minimum-evidence floor before publication. Distinct from corpus-extracted content, which is labelled as such.

Pay across the ladder

Distribution Center / Warehouse — median with , by . Real canon data.

Pay figures are modeled estimates from our market equation — level-differentiated, with honest-wide bands. They refresh as new leveling evidence lands; treat per-role dollars as directional.

Demand — is the field growing, or just turning over?

SOC 53-0000 · national

Employment growth 2019–2024, BLS OEWSobserved

+30.1%Stockers and Order Fillers · United States

2,135,850 → 2,779,530 jobs

472,300 openings / year, split into:

replacement / exits 448,799

Growth — new jobs (5%)Exits — backfill (95%)

5% of hiring here is genuine expansion; the rest backfills people who move on.

Projected growth 2024–34 expanding: +8.5%
Growth share of hiring: 5%
Exit / retention pressure high: 95%
Openings / year: 472,300

Two quantities, kept apart: observed = employment growth differenced from two BLS OEWS vintages (what already happened); projected = BLS Employment Projections 2024–34, openings decomposed into growth + exits (growth derived from projected employment change). Neither is a pay figure.

Where this role sits — growth vs. pay

level S5 held

Demand axis is projected growth (not raw openings — that just measures churn). A curated, de-duplicated set of recognizable occupations held at this level; this role is highlighted.

Where it pays — by metro

OEWS metro median

San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA$104k

San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA$93k

Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV$86k

Boulder, CO$85k

Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA$85k

Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH$82k

Lexington Park, MD$80k

Trenton-Princeton, NJ$79k

Pay only — metro-level demand isn't in public data (it needs job postings). National median $63k; the demand-cube initiative will add growth-by-metro.

What changes across the ladder

Level-distinction canon isn't available for the adjacent levels of this profile yet.

Level differentiators

What separates S5 (S5 — Principal Support Specialist) from the levels around it — this level only. Every word is real canon for this profile.

Scope: Function-wide support practice
Autonomy: Sets direction for the support discipline
Complexity: Program-level and systemic support problems
Impact: Support strategy across the function
Decision rights: Authority over support practice and standards
Leadership: Subject-matter authority; shapes the practice

Full level-by-level matrix (side by side across the ladder) lives on the Ladder drill-down — not here.

Promotion

S5is the top of this family's ladder — progression from here is a lattice move (see adjacent roles below), not a rung.

Performance criteria for this profile render in the assessment kit →

People also watch

Nearest coordinate neighbors — same , same level. Each row's (confident / review / no match) comes from its — computed, not curated.

Profile	Key	Median	Δ structural
Chief Distribution Officer	jf_distribution_center_warehouse::E5	$351,571	confident0.06
Director of Distribution Center Operations	jf_distribution_center_warehouse::M5	$194,360	confident0.06
Staff Packaging Engineer	jf_distribution_center_warehouse::P5	$142,824	confident0.06
Advanced Warehouse Associate	jf_distribution_center_warehouse::S4	$58,202	confident0.06

Capability cluster

O*NET 53-7065

Core to this role. Click any element with an ⓘ for its O*NET definition. A job-specific capability model (SkillFrame) will sharpen this and add worked examples.

The Job Swatch

S5

jf_distribution_center_warehouse::S5

Lead Warehouse Specialist

Distribution Center / Warehouse

The swatch is JobFrame's core primitive: a hueset deterministically by the role's superfunction, the profileKey as its color code, the level ladder, and a content fingerprint. Two swatches that look alike are alike.

Because every role carries computable coordinates, similarity, leveling, and pricing become measurable instead of arguable— the whole point of "Pantone for jobs."

Structural

structural@1

Where it sits— position in the work taxonomy + level (weighted Gower, level > function > focus).

Track: S
Superfunction: manufacturing
Function: supply_chain
Family: distribution_center_warehouse
Universal level: 5 / 8

Content

content@2

What it's about— a fingerprint over the role's tasks & capabilities.

Two roles can sit far apart structurally yet be close in content — that gap is itself a signal.

3-state matching

How any two swatches compare — a real distance in coordinate space, resolved to a calibrated verdict (never a fake "94% match").

Demand / Forecast Planning · S5review0.17

Materials · S5review0.17

Purchasing / Procurement · S5review0.17

Transportation · S5review0.17

Editions — frozen & versioned

structural@1live

Released 2026-06-17

content@2live

Released 2026-07-28

pay@2live

Released 2026-07-02

semantic@1live

Released 2026-07-02

Coordinates belong to a frozen, versioned edition — a coordinate computed today still means the same thing next quarter. Re-fitting issues a new edition, so comparisons are never silently redefined.

How to read this profile

Every number here is traceable — to a named source, a stated method, and an as-of date — and each value is labeled by how we know it: observed from data, computed by a model, projected forward, or governed canon. Nothing is a black box, and nothing is invented to fill a gap.

Where every number comes from

What	Source & method	Edition	State
Median pay + range	JobFrame pay equation (function base × family multiplier × level × focus differential)	pay@2	computed
Pay across the ladder	Same equation applied at each universal level	pay@2	computed
Demand — growth & openings	BLS Employment Projections; openings decomposed into growth + exits	EP 2024–34	projected
Pay by metro	BLS OEWS metropolitan medians	OEWS 2024	observed
Level distinctions	JobFrame universal-level canon (scope · autonomy · complexity · impact · decision rights · leadership)	canon	canon
Capability cluster	O*NET Knowledge / Skills / Abilities	O*NET 53-7065	computed
Coordinates	JobFrame coordinate system — structural (weighted Gower) + content fingerprint	structural@1 · content@2 · pay@2 · semantic@1	computed
Related roles	Nearest neighbors in the structural coordinate space	structural@1	computed

The principles behind the numbers

Ranges, not false precision

Pay is P10 · median · P90, never a single misleading number.

Three honest states, never a fake %

Role matches resolve to confident / review / no-match — a calibrated verdict, not a made-up percentage.

Provenance on every value

Each number carries whether it's observed, computed, projected, or canon — so you always know how much to lean on it.

Gaps shown as gaps

When a figure isn't available at the grain you need, we say so — we don't fabricate a number to fill the cell.

Frozen, versioned editions

Pay and coordinate editions are pinned, so a comparison you make today still means the same thing next quarter.

Privacy by min-N

Any aggregate over people is suppressed below a minimum count, so no individual is identifiable.

Freshness

As of2026-07-30Editioncanon-v2@2.1.0-completeSourcecanon-v2 cell + salary-benchmark (model)