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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

51-0000

manufacturing

Coordinates

3 / 4 spaces

pay@2 · 2026-07

What this role is

Serves as the top technical authority for CNC machining operations, guiding programming, setup, and quality standards across the shop floor. 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

Develops and proves out setup procedures and machining methods for the shop's most complex geometries and tightest tolerances, including 5-axis work, and documents them as repeatable setup sheets for others to run
Improves entire machining processes on the floor, applying lean and Six Sigma techniques to cut cycle time, scrap, and rework across a family of parts
Acts as the working lead and technical authority on the shop floor — mentoring and training machinists, overseeing shop operations, and driving performance through technical leadership
Works with engineers and technicians in R&D, manufacturing, and fixture-design teams to ensure parts are machinable and meet design specifications, feeding shop-floor knowledge back into design and process

Knowledge applied: Highly skilled specialist who develops new setup procedures and machining methods, including complex 5-axis work, and codifies them for the shop.
Complexity & problem solving: Resolves the shop's most complex machining problems and drives process improvement (lean, Six Sigma) across families of parts.
Collaboration & interaction: Acts as working lead and mentor on the floor and partners with R&D, manufacturing, and fixture-design engineers to influence design for manufacturability.
Typical experience: 6+ years; expert machinist / shop technical authority.

Skills at this level

CNC Machine Operation: — Operates CNC milling and turning centers from setup sheets — loading tools, setting work offsets, touching off, and running production jobs to blueprint dimensions.
CNC Programming and Code Editing: — Programs and modifies CNC G-code at the control, setting speeds, feeds, tool paths, and work-holding using knowledge of math, tooling, and how materials react to stress and heat.
Wear Offset Adjustment: — Reads a part's measured dimension against the print and adjusts wear offsets in the machine control to bring the feature back to target during a run.
Blueprint and Specification Interpretation: — Interprets technical blueprints, models, and GD&T specifications to determine the dimensions, tolerances, and features a machined part must meet.
Dimensional Inspection: — Performs detailed quality inspections using calipers, micrometers, height gauges, bore gauges, and go/no-go pins, verifying parts to tolerances sometimes within .0001 of an inch.
Machine Setup and Work-Holding: — Selects and configures fixtures, chucks, vises, and tooling to hold a part rigidly and locate it correctly for the machining operation.
Manual Machining: — Operates manual mills, lathes, grinders, and other machine tools to cut and finish metal parts where a manual operation is faster or more appropriate than CNC.
Machining Troubleshooting: — Diagnoses in-process problems — chatter, tool breakage, poor surface finish, dimensional drift — and determines the tooling, fixturing, or parameter change that corrects them.
Tooling and Cutting Parameter Selection: — Chooses cutting tools, inserts, coolant, speeds, and feeds appropriate to the material and geometry to hold tolerance and maximize tool life.
Root-Cause Analysis of Production Problems: — Finds the underlying cause of recurring scrap or process failures on the floor and recommends work-holding, tooling, or method changes to prevent recurrence.
Machining Process Improvement: — Applies lean manufacturing and Six Sigma techniques to reduce cycle time, scrap, and rework across families of machined parts.
Setup Procedure Development: — Develops and proves out machining methods and setup sheets for complex geometries and tight-tolerance 5-axis work so that others can repeat the job reliably.
Shop Floor Mentoring: — Guides and trains less experienced machinists through difficult setups and troubleshooting, and coordinates work across the machine shop as a working lead.
Preventive Maintenance and Tooling Inventory: — Maintains machine condition through routine preventive maintenance and manages the shop's tooling inventory to keep production running.

Model-authored from 22 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

Machine Shop — 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 51-0000 · national

Employment growth 2019–2024, BLS OEWSobserved

-22.1%Machinists · United States

383,470 → 298,790 jobs

29,500 openings / year, split into:

replacement / exits 29,500

Growth — new jobs (0%)Exits — backfill (100%)

This occupation is projected to contract — every opening is replacing someone leaving, not net new demand.

Projected growth 2024–34 contracting: 0.0%
Growth share of hiring: 0%
Exit / retention pressure high: 100%
Openings / year: 29,500

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 Manufacturing Officer	jf_machine_shop::E5	$351,571	confident0.06
Director of Machine Shop Operations	jf_machine_shop::M5	$194,360	confident0.06
Staff CNC Programmer	jf_machine_shop::P5	$142,824	confident0.06
Advanced CNC Machinist	jf_machine_shop::S4	$58,202	confident0.06

Capability cluster

O*NET 51-4041

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_machine_shop::S5

Lead CNC Machinist

Machine Shop

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: manufacturing_expansion
Family: machine_shop
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").

Chemistry, Manufacturing & Controls (CMC) · S5review0.17

Lean Manufacturing · S5review0.17

Maintenance · S5review0.17

Manufacturing Engineering · S5review0.17

Pilot Plant Operations · S5review0.17

Production Test · 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 51-4041	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)