A(Agriculture (AgTech)
A(
Career

Agriculture (AgTech)

By the numbers
Typical pay
$49,630 / yr
Education to start
Associate's degree
Future demand
+4.3% by 2034
People in this job
15K
Figures shown for ·closest of 3 O*NET occupations
The work
A day, hour by hour
07:30
Data pull & alerts

Check overnight sensor dashboards — flag any fields with missing or weird readings.

08:00
Team standup

Sync with engineers and agronomists. Sort what's blocked from what ships today.

08:25
Model review

Audit yesterday's pest-outbreak predictions — is the model confident enough to act on?

09:30
Field visit

Drive out to test site; a soil sensor stopped transmitting mid-field last night.

11:00
Farmer sit-down

Listen to a grower's complaints — figure out if the gap is tech or just trust.

13:00
Build & test

Back at the desk: code a new drone flight path, run it against last week's imagery.

15:30
Yield report

Write up whether the new irrigation system actually moved the numbers this season.

16:30
Cross-team sync

Walk product and sales through findings. Negotiate what goes into the next release.

17:15
Wrap & log

Document field notes, queue tomorrow's drone scans, close out data tickets.

Things you do
  • Build software or sensors that help farmers grow more food with less waste.
  • Program drones to scan fields and spot sick or struggling crops.
  • Train AI models to predict pest outbreaks before they destroy a harvest.
  • Test robotic harvesters or irrigation systems out in actual farm fields.
  • Dig through mountains of soil, weather, and yield data to find patterns.
Decisions you’ll make
  • Is this farmer's real problem a tech gap, or a trust gap?
  • Should I build a custom solution here, or adapt something that already exists?
  • Is my model's prediction accurate enough to act on, or could it mislead the farmer?
  • Should I push for the more sustainable approach, even if it costs more upfront?
  • Is this field ready to test the new system, or will conditions ruin the data?
Education Pathways · how you get there
74 in 100 went the college route · 26 in 100 found another way in None, typically
Education mapped from O*NET:
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