Air Traffic Controller

The headline civilian path is the obvious one. The FAA hires air traffic control specialists for towers, TRACONs, and en route centers, and prior controllers with FAA-recognized experience can apply through targeted bid announcements instead of the general public lottery. Per BLS OEWS May 2024, air traffic controllers (53-2021) earn a median of $144,580, among the highest non-degree salaries the federal government pays. The honest catch: BLS projects roughly 1 percent employment growth from 2024 to 2034 with about 2,200 openings a year, and the NextGen satellite system lets each controller handle more traffic, so the field is competitive and hiring runs in waves tied to FAA bid cycles. You apply when the window opens, not whenever you are ready.

Outside the FAA tower cab, the aviation operations world hires the same skill set. Airfield operations specialists (53-2022) manage runway and ramp safety, NOTAMs, and airfield inspections at commercial and regional airports, with a BLS median of $56,750 as of May 2024. Airport operations supervisors and aviation operations coordinators run the day-to-day flow of an airfield, and those roles ladder toward transportation, storage, and distribution manager positions (11-3071), which carry a $102,010 median per BLS May 2024. Contract towers operated by companies like Robinson Aviation and Midwest ATC staff thousands of controllers at smaller airports under FAA contract, and that is frequently the faster door for a transitioning Marine than waiting on a federal bid.

One geographic note worth being straight about: air traffic and airfield jobs cluster where the airports are. Major TRACONs, the en route centers, and the busiest contract towers sit near large metro areas and regional aviation hubs, so the highest-paying openings are not evenly spread across the country. If you are open on location, you have far more options. For the resume that carries all of this, our resume tools translate your facility ratings into civilian-readable terms, and you can build your resume now before the next FAA bid opens. Controllers eyeing the broader aviation-maintenance and operations market should also read military to civilian aviation careers and the Air Force 1C1X1 Air Traffic Control page for how the same work maps from a sister service.

Federal aviation has a series built for exactly this background: GS-2152 Air Traffic Control. The FAA fills the bulk of these positions, and prior military controllers with FAA-recognized experience are a named eligibility category, which means you can apply to facility-specific bids rather than competing only in the general public hiring window. The qualification standard rewards documented facility ratings and control hours, so the way you describe your tower, RAPCON, and GCA time directly drives whether you are referred. Federal aviation pay frequently runs on the FAA FV pay band rather than the standard GS table, and the FAA FV pay scale guide breaks down how those bands compare to GS grades.

The 2152 series is not the only federal door. GS-1815 Air Safety Investigating covers FAA and NTSB roles that examine incidents, procedures, and airspace design, and a controller who knows separation standards from the inside is a credible candidate. GS-2150 Transportation Operations and GS-2101 Transportation Specialist cover airfield and air operations management across the FAA, DoD, and the Department of Transportation. GS-0856 Electronics Technician fits controllers who maintained or troubleshot radar and NAVAIDS at expeditionary sites. Two adjacent series round it out: GS-0018 Safety and Occupational Health Management for airfield safety roles, and GS-0301 Miscellaneous Administration and Program for aviation program coordination billets.

Veterans preference applies on top of all of it. Your 5 or 10 points ride with every USAJOBS application, and for the FAA bid process your prior-controller eligibility is the bigger lever. To get the qualification language right, read how to find your military job series equivalent and 2026 OPM federal resume format requirements. When you are ready to draft the USAJOBS version, our federal resume builder structures it to standard, or you can start your federal resume here. The Air Force 1C7X1 Airfield Management page shares several of these same GS targets.

If you are applying to FAA or contract-tower jobs, your terminology already matches theirs. Controllers, airfield managers, and aviation operations hiring teams use the same phraseology you do, so do not water it down for them. This section is for the controllers targeting careers outside air traffic, where a hiring manager has never heard of RAPCON or a CL score and needs the work in plain business language.

The skill underneath your job is high-stakes real-time decision-making with zero room for error, and that is what translates. A few mappings that land outside aviation:

• RAPCON / radar approach control becomes real-time operations control of high-volume, time-critical traffic with continuous risk assessment.
• Separation standards / FAA Order 7110.65 becomes applying strict regulatory safety procedures to prevent collisions under continuous workload.
• Expeditionary ATC facility stand-up becomes deploying and operating a mission-critical control center from initial setup in austere conditions.
• Sector handoff and coordination becomes coordinating handoffs across teams and systems with no margin for communication error.

Here is a before and after for a controller moving toward an emergency-dispatch or operations-center role. Before: "Controlled aircraft in the RAPCON and provided GCA approaches IAW 7110.65." After: "Directed real-time movement of up to 20 simultaneous aircraft under federal safety regulations, making split-second separation decisions with zero margin for error across 12-hour operational shifts." Same job, language a civilian hiring manager can score. The military terms glossary covers more of these swaps, and converting your FITREP into resume bullets shows how to pull metrics from your evals. Our military resume builder does the translation pass for you.