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Key statistics

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

3 of 8

Track

Support

Family rungs priced

S1 · S2 · S3 · S4 · S5

51-0000

industrial_energy_operations

Coordinates

3 / 4 spaces

pay@2 · 2026-07

What this role is

Experienced, skilled operator who runs power plant systems and equipment with minimal supervision. At the Senior Support Specialist (S3) level, the role owns escalated / complex cases, complex or non-standard cases, and drives resolution quality on the team's hardest cases. Guides junior support informally.

What this level does

Control power-generating equipment — boilers, turbines and generators — through a full shift with little instruction on daily work, exercising judgment to keep the plant within safe and regulatory limits while meeting dispatch and load requirements.
Diagnose moderately difficult operating problems from meter, gauge and SCADA readings, isolating the affected system and taking the non-routine corrective action the situation calls for.
Manage the flow of power by adjusting controls during load changes and equipment swaps, coordinating auxiliary systems (pumps, fans, compressors, filters) to hold parameters.
Coordinate specific operating tasks with other operators during startups, shutdowns and equipment transfers, without holding supervisory authority.
Troubleshoot equipment faults during operation and initiate first-line repair or lockout steps, referring larger interventions to maintenance.

Knowledge applied: Detailed knowledge of plant operating procedures sufficient to run controls and perform non-routine tasks independently.
Complexity & problem solving: Makes judgments on moderately difficult operating problems; diagnoses and corrects faults using initiative.
Collaboration & interaction: Needs little instruction on daily work; coordinates specific tasks with other operators but leads no one.
Typical experience: 2–4 years; skilled in plant operation.

Skills at this level

Power-Generating Equipment Operation: — Controls boilers, turbines and generators to produce specified power, starting and stopping units and holding output within safe operating parameters.
Meter and Gauge Interpretation: — Reads voltage, temperature, pressure and flow indicators on meters and gauges, judging whether values fall within specified operating parameters and when to act.
Control-Room and SCADA Monitoring: — Continuously monitors plant systems through control-room interfaces such as SPPA and OSI PI and SCADA displays, detecting alarms and trends that signal operating problems.
Power Flow Regulation: — Adjusts controls to regulate the flow of power during load changes, dispatch demand and equipment transfers so the plant meets load while staying within limits.
Auxiliary Systems Control: — Operates auxiliary equipment — pumps, fans, compressors and filters — to support the main generating units through startups, shutdowns and steady operation.
Equipment Fault Diagnosis and Troubleshooting: — Detects evidence of defects or malfunctions in plant equipment and isolates and corrects operating faults, referring larger repairs to maintenance.
Preventive Maintenance and Surveillance: — Performs scheduled inspections and preventive checks on boilers, turbines, generators and distribution systems, documenting condition and discrepancies.
Steam and Chilled Water Distribution Systems: — Operates and monitors steam and chilled-water distribution systems and the associated valves, headers and controls that carry plant output to the facility.
Abnormal and Emergency Operations Response: — Sequences safe shutdown, load-shed and equipment-protection actions during upset, off-normal and emergency plant conditions.
Regulatory and Safety Compliance: — Keeps operating actions and logs aligned with regulatory limits and safety protocols governing power-plant operation.
Operating Log and Record Keeping: — Records readings, adjustments, alarms and shift events on prescribed logs to document plant status and support trending and handover.
Operating Procedure Development: — Drafts and refines startup, shutdown and abnormal-condition operating procedures based on observed equipment behavior and operating experience.

Model-authored from 20 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

Power Plant Management — median with , by . Real canon data.

National-base pricing — this family's function differential is pending review, so dollar levels are not function-adjusted (level-over-level % is unaffected).

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

-8.6%Power Plant Operators · United States

33,620 → 30,720 jobs

2,500 openings / year, split into:

replacement / exits 2,853

Growth — new jobs (-14%)Exits — backfill (100%)

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

Projected growth 2024–34 contracting: -11.2%
Growth share of hiring: -14%
Exit / retention pressure high: 100%
Openings / year: 2,500

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 S3 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$85k

San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA$76k

Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV$71k

Boulder, CO$70k

Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA$70k

Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH$67k

Lexington Park, MD$65k

Trenton-Princeton, NJ$65k

Pay only — metro-level demand isn't in public data (it needs job postings). National median $51k; 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 S3 (S3 — Senior Support Specialist) from the levels around it — this level only. Every word is real canon for this profile.

Scope: Escalated / complex cases
Autonomy: Limited supervision
Complexity: Complex or non-standard cases
Impact: Resolution quality on the team's hardest cases
Decision rights: Owns escalation resolution within policy
Leadership: Guides junior support informally

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

Promotion

The next rung from S3 is S4.

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 Plant Officer	jf_power_plant_management::E3	$352,063†	confident0.06
Power Plant Manager	jf_power_plant_management::M3	$120,351†	confident0.06
Power Plant Engineer	jf_power_plant_management::P3	$82,468†	confident0.06
Power Plant Operator	jf_power_plant_management::S2	$42,923†	confident0.06

†National-base pricing — this family's function differential is pending review, so the dollar level is not function-adjusted.

Capability cluster

O*NET 51-8013

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

S3

jf_power_plant_management::S3

Senior Power Plant Operator

Power Plant Management

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: industrial_energy_operations
Function: plant_operations
Family: power_plant_management
Universal level: 3 / 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").

Mining Processing Plant · S3review0.17

Nuclear Power Plant · S3review0.17

Plant Maintenance (Energy/Mining) · S3review0.17

Plant Operations (Energy/Mining) · S3review0.17

Refinery · S3review0.17

Renewables Plant · S3review0.17

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 51-8013	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)