You have a field service role open. Maybe it is a tech who flies to a hospital to install a CT scanner. Maybe it is an engineer who drives four hours to a plant when a production line goes down at 2 a.m. The job is hard to fill. The person has to travel, work alone at a customer site, diagnose a complex machine, and fix it the first time. Mess it up and the customer is down and angry.

Most companies fight over the same shrinking pool of trained civilian techs. There is a better source most hiring teams walk right past. The military trains thousands of people every year to do exactly this work. They diagnose and repair complex systems under pressure. They travel. They work without a supervisor watching. They document everything.

This guide is about one specific role. The traveling field service engineer (FSE) or field service technician who installs, commissions, troubleshoots, and repairs complex equipment at customer sites. If you want the wider view across all skilled trades and field jobs, read our broader guide on recruiting veterans for skilled trades and field operations. Here we go deep on the FSE.

Why are field service roles so hard to fill?

The civilian pipeline for these jobs is thin and getting thinner. The people who can diagnose a piece of capital equipment are aging out. Schools are not producing replacements fast enough. And the work asks a lot.

A good FSE needs four things at once. Deep technical skill. The will to travel. The judgment to work alone. And the calm to handle an upset customer while the clock runs. That mix is rare in the open market. Most candidates have one or two of those traits, not all four.

The numbers back this up. Industrial machinery mechanics, the closest civilian match to many FSE roles, are projected to grow 13 percent from 2024 to 2034. That is much faster than average, per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. About 54,200 openings are projected each year over the decade. Demand is high. Supply is low. That gap is your problem.

What makes military techs a strong match for the FSE role?

Think about what a field service job really demands. Now match it to what the military already trains. The fit is close. Closer than almost any other role you could fill with a veteran.

A Navy or Coast Guard electronics technician spends years on one job. Find the fault in a complex system. Fix it. Get the ship back to mission. They do this far from any depot, with no one to call. That is field service. The customer is just a ship instead of a factory.

An Air Force avionics tech does the same on aircraft. An Army wheeled vehicle mechanic does it on trucks and generators in the field. None of them get to say "send it back to the shop." They fix it where it sits. That is the exact mindset a traveling FSE needs.

That last one matters more than people think. Military maintainers document every job. Parts used. Time on task. Fault found. They do it because the rules demand it and because the next person needs the record. Your warranty claims and service reports need the same discipline. They already have it.

Which military jobs map to field service work?

You do not need to learn every code. A few map straight to the FSE bench. A Navy Electronics Technician troubleshoots radar, comms, and power systems down to the component. An Air Force avionics test station technician runs diagnostics on complex electronics. An Army Wheeled Vehicle Mechanic diagnoses and repairs engines, hydraulics, and generators in the field.

Want a faster way to match codes to your open reqs? See our guide on how to map a military career field to your open reqs. It saves your recruiters hours of guessing.

How do you read an FSE candidate's military resume?

Here is where most hiring teams stumble. A veteran's resume can look foreign. The job titles are codes. The duties use acronyms. If your recruiter screens for the word "field service engineer," they will miss every qualified vet, because the military does not use that title.

Train your team to read for the work, not the words. Look for fault isolation. Look for unsupervised repair away from a depot. Look for travel, deployments, and detachments. Look for the gear they touched and how complex it was. That is the FSE skill set in a different uniform.

One more tip. Many veterans run their resume through a tool before they apply. Our resume builder translates the acronyms into plain civilian language and formats it so it ranks well when applicant tracking systems rack-and-stack the pile. So the resumes you receive from BMR candidates already read clean. If you want a full screening framework, we wrote a guide on how to evaluate a veteran resume.

What should you ask an FSE candidate in the interview?

The interview is where you confirm the four traits the job demands. Do not just ask about wrenching. Ask about the parts of field service that break new hires. Travel fatigue. Working alone. The angry customer. The first-time fix.

Veterans tend to undersell in interviews. They were trained to say "we," not "I." So you may have to draw out the individual story. Ask follow-ups. "What did you personally do?" "Who else was there to help?" Often the answer is "no one," which is exactly what you want to hear.

Listen for the candidate who stayed calm when the gear was down and people wanted answers. That person will handle your angriest customer the same way. The military put them through worse than a missed service window.

How do you close the skill gap on your specific equipment?

Here is the honest part. A veteran has not worked on your exact machine. A Navy ET has not serviced your brand of MRI or your line of CNC tools. That gap is real. It is also small and fast to close.

The hard part of field service is the diagnostic mindset. Reading a system, forming a theory, testing it, fixing the fault. That takes years to build. The military already built it. Learning your specific platform is a matter of weeks of product training, not years.

Build a short product-specific onboarding track. Pair the new hire with a senior FSE for the first month of road work. Let them shadow installs and commissions before they run a call alone. A veteran picks this up fast because the underlying skill is already there.

This same play works across other technical fields. We cover it for plants in our guide on hiring veterans for manufacturing roles, for the flight line in our aviation and aerospace hiring guide, and for power systems in our energy and utilities guide.

What does an FSE role pay, and why does that help you?

Field service pays well, and that works in your favor when you hire veterans. Electrical and electronics installers and repairers had a median wage of $71,270 in May 2024, per BLS data. Industrial machinery mechanics sat at $63,510. These are solid careers, not stopgap jobs.

A veteran coming off active duty is often looking for a stable, well-paid technical role with room to grow. Your FSE opening fits that exactly. You are not selling them a side gig. You are offering a career that uses the skills they spent years building. That alignment is why veterans who land in field service tend to stay.

The federal government also encourages veteran hiring through resources at the Department of Labor Veterans' Employment and Training Service. It is worth a look if you want to build a repeatable veteran-sourcing motion rather than a one-off hire.

How do you keep a veteran FSE for the long haul?

Hiring the tech is half the job. Keeping them is the other half. Field service has a churn problem. The road wears people down. Good news: the same traits that make a veteran good at the work also make them likely to stay, if you manage it right.

Veterans are used to a clear chain of command and a clear mission. Give them both. Tell them what a good week looks like. Tell them who to call when a job goes sideways. Vague management frustrates them faster than a hard repair ever will.

Watch the travel load. The veteran can handle the road. They handled deployments. But they also left the service to be home more, in many cases. A territory that keeps them out 25 nights a month will burn them out, no matter how tough they are. Balance the schedule and you keep the hire.

Give them a path to grow too. Junior tech to senior FSE to team lead. Veterans think in ranks and expect to advance. Show them the ladder and they will climb it instead of leaving for it.

Where do you find these candidates?

This is where BMR fits. Veterans who are job hunting build and tailor their resumes on our platform. Field service is one of the most common landing spots for the maintenance and electronics community, so the pool runs deep with exactly the techs you need.

Two numbers tell the story. More than 1,000 new veteran profiles are added every month. Over 60,000 resumes have been built on the platform. That is a steady, growing supply of trained technical talent, and a large share of it comes from the maintenance and electronics ratings that map straight to field service.

You do not have to scroll job boards hoping a qualified tech wandered in. You can reach into a pool built specifically of veterans who already have the diagnostic skill, the travel tolerance, and the work-alone judgment your FSE role demands. Then you add the one thing they are missing, which is training on your specific equipment.

If you have field service roles to fill and want access to BMR's veteran talent pool, reach out through our hire page. We can connect you with the maintenance and electronics talent that maps to your open bench.