Surveyor

Technology & Design

Establishes the exact boundaries, elevations, and reference points a project gets built against, the one role where being off by an inch can mean a building in the wrong place.

What is a Surveyor?

A (Land) Surveyor measures and maps land boundaries, elevations, and physical features, then translates that into the control points and benchmarks a construction crew builds from: where the building corner actually sits, what elevation the finished floor needs to be. Practicing as a Licensed Professional Land Surveyor requires state licensure, which in nearly every U.S. state means passing the NCEES Fundamentals of Surveying (FS) exam early in a surveying career and the NCEES Principles and Practice of Surveying (PS) exam after gaining qualifying experience, the same two-exam structure a licensed engineer goes through, run by the same national organization (NCEES).

What they do

• Establish property boundaries through legal research and field measurement
• Set control points and benchmarks that a project's layout is built from
• Perform topographic surveys documenting existing site conditions before design
• Verify as-built conditions against design drawings during and after construction
• Prepare legal descriptions and plats used in property records and permitting
• Use GPS, robotic total stations, and increasingly drone-based scanning to collect field data

A typical day

• 6:30 AMLoad survey equipment and review the day's control points to establish or verify
• 7:30 AMSet benchmarks and control points for a new building layout
• 10:30 AMPerform a topographic survey of a site being considered for a future project
• 1:00 PMProcess the morning's field data in the office
• 3:00 PMVerify as-built foundation locations against the design drawings before the next phase starts

Skills

Software

Pay expectations

Reviewed May 2025. Pay reflects the national wage distribution for this occupation, not a promise for any one job: entry level is the lower part of that range, 5 years in sits around the national median, and 10 years in is the upper part, since pay isn't actually tracked by years on the job. Real pay varies a lot by state, metro area, union status, and employer — scale these up or down for your market. These figures are base pay only: overtime, shift differentials, and per-project bonuses are standard across most construction trades and routinely push real earnings above what's shown here.

Education

Required:

Varies by state, but licensure as a Professional Land Surveyor (PLS) generally requires a surveying-related degree or qualifying experience, passing the NCEES Fundamentals of Surveying (FS) exam, several years of supervised experience, and then the NCEES Principles and Practice of Surveying (PS) exam

Preferred:

Bachelor's degree in surveying or geomatics

Helpful:

Drone/UAV pilot certification, as aerial data collection becomes more common in the field

Not necessary:

Entry-level field crew positions (survey technician/party chief track) don't require a degree; many surveyors start there and pursue licensure over time

Career progression

1. 1.Survey Technician
2. 2.Party Chief
3. 3.Licensed Professional Land Surveyor
4. 4.Survey Manager or Owner of a Surveying Firm

Who hires for this role