Precision Weapons Repairer

Your training points at a cluster of skilled-trade and instrument-repair occupations that pay well and screen hard for the exact abilities you already proved. Salary figures below are BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics median annual wages, May 2024.

Gunsmith and small-arms technician. The closest direct match. BLS groups gunsmiths under Precision Instrument and Equipment Repairers, All Other (O*NET 49-9069.00), median $67,080. Custom rifle shops, manufacturers like Beretta and SIG SAUER, and law-enforcement armories hire people who can chamber, headspace, and accurize. This is the same work you did at the Precision Weapons Section, with a price tag attached.

Machinist and tool and die maker. Machinists (O*NET 51-4041.00) earn a median of $56,150 and tool and die makers (51-4111.00) $63,180. Both reward the print-reading, tight-tolerance, lathe-and-mill skill set. Tool and die is the higher-skill, higher-paying lane and a natural fit for a Marine who already trued receivers and fit match barrels.

CNC tool programmer. If the 5-axis mill at PWS was your favorite part of the job, this is the path with room to run. CNC tool programmers (O*NET 51-9162.00) earn a median of $65,670, and BLS projects much-faster-than-average growth of 7 percent or higher through 2034. Programming toolpaths for production work is the same logic you applied building one-off precision actions.

Camera and photographic equipment repairer. The optical-alignment side of your job transfers here. Camera and photographic equipment repairers (O*NET 49-9061.00) earn a median of $49,300. Collimating a scope and aligning a lens assembly draw on the same patience and precision, though this field is contracting, so treat it as a niche rather than a destination.

Mechanical engineering technician and quality inspector. Mechanical engineering technologists and technicians (O*NET 17-3027.00) earn a median of $68,730, and inspectors, testers, and weighers (O*NET 51-9061.00) earn $47,460. Both lean on your ability to measure to spec and certify a finished tolerance with calipers, micrometers, and gauges.

Be honest about geography. Gunsmithing and custom rifle work concentrate where firearms manufacturing and shooting culture are strong, including the Mountain West, the Southeast, and parts of the Northeast. Precision machining follows aerospace, defense, and medical-device manufacturing hubs. If you are flexible on location, the higher-paying machining and CNC roles open up fast. Marines from related repair fields land in the same shops, so it is worth seeing how Navy Machinery Repairmen and Navy Gunner's Mates describe the same work. Once you have a target title, the military resume builder helps you frame the tolerances and equipment a shop foreman wants to see. When you are ready to apply, you can build your resume now.

Federal hands-on weapons and instrument work is largely Wage Grade (WG) trade work rather than GS, and that is good news for a 2112 because the WG system tests skill, not a degree. The crosswalk table below lists the series that match your background, with grade levels and how directly the skill transfers. A few stand out.

The cleanest match is the WG-3306 Optical Instrument Repair series, which covers the repair and calibration of fire-control, sighting, and optical instruments. That is your collimation and instrument-diagnosis work, almost line for line. WG-3414 Machining covers the lathe, mill, and CNC fabrication side, and WG-3306 plus WG-3414 together describe most of what you did at the Precision Weapons Section. Arsenals and depots such as Rock Island Arsenal, Anniston Army Depot, and the Marine Corps logistics bases at Albany and Barstow hire directly into these trades.

On the GS side, your experience qualifies you for technical and oversight roles. GS-0802 Engineering Technician supports weapons test and evaluation, GS-1910 Quality Assurance covers government inspection of manufactured ordnance, and GS-2604 Electronics Mechanic fits the electro-optical and fire-control electronics you touched. These reward someone who can read a print, run a measurement, and document a defect.

Veterans' Preference adds 5 or 10 points to your eligibility rating on competitive GS announcements, and many depot trade jobs use direct-hire authority that moves faster than the standard process. For the WG trades, your DD-214 and a clear description of your hands-on hours do most of the work, so the resume needs to read like a job-shop record, not a fitness report. Our guide on the federal job series every veteran should search and the federal resume tips that get veterans referred walk through the format. The federal resume builder handles the length and KSA structure USAJOBS expects. Marines from related fields target the same depots, so compare notes with Air Force Aircraft Armament Systems backgrounds.

If you are staying in gunsmithing, machining, or instrument repair, your terminology already matches the shop. A custom rifle builder knows what headspace and a 5-axis mill are. This section is for the 2112 targeting a career outside weapons and optics work, where the hiring manager has never heard of a Precision Weapons Section and reads "armorer" as someone who hands out rifles.

The fix is to translate the precision and the process, not the gun. Lead with tolerances, equipment, throughput, and accountability, because those are the words a manufacturing or quality manager scans for. A few examples for non-field resumes:

• "Precision Weapons Repairer, PWS" becomes "Precision Machinist / Instrument Technician" for a manufacturing or medical-device resume.
• "Accurized M40 sniper rifles" becomes "Fabricated and fit components to tolerances of 0.0001 inch using manual lathes, mills, and a 5-axis CNC machine."
• "Collimated and zeroed optics and fire-control sights" becomes "Aligned, calibrated, and certified optical and electro-optical instruments against published specifications."
• "Maintained the competition-in-arms weapons inventory" becomes "Managed accountability and maintenance records for a high-value precision equipment program with zero loss."

The pattern is to name the measurement, the equipment, and the standard. A shop foreman who sees "0.0001 inch" and "5-axis CNC" knows exactly what you can do, regardless of what the part was. For a deeper list of translations, the 50 military terms translated to civilian language glossary and our guide to quantifying military experience show the before-and-after format. The military resume builder applies this translation as you go.