How To Become An Optical Laboratory Technician: What It Is and Career Path

What is an optical laboratory technician and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

Have you ever thought about how your glasses or contact lenses are produced? It's not as simple as picking a frame off the racks and taking it home. Instead, your glasses or lenses need to be fitted precisely to your prescription and your measurements in an optical laboratory. Usually, it's the optical laboratory technician that does the bulk of the work.

If you were an optical laboratory technician, you would use cool equipment to cut, polish, and grind lenses. This equipment can also be dangerous, so you would have to wear plenty of safety gear such as goggles and gloves to protect yourself. You have to be very precise to be an optical laboratory technician, both to craft excellent lenses and to protect your fingers on the job.

You probably wouldn't need to go to college to be an optical laboratory technician because this is such a specialized skill. Instead, you would learn on-the-job from an already experienced technician. Then you would know all that you need to know to bring clear vision to the world.

ScoreOptical Laboratory TechnicianUS Average

Salary

2.6

Avg. Salary $32,926

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

6.0

Growth rate 2%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

9.4

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.54%

Asian 9.31%

Black or African American 7.50%

Hispanic or Latino 21.91%

Unknown 3.80%

White 56.95%

Gender

female 45.13%

male 54.87%

Age - 43

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 43

Stress level

6.0

Stress level is manageable

7.1 - high

Complexity level

7.7

Complexity level is challenging

7 - challenging

Work life balance

6.2

Work life balance is fair

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become an optical laboratory technician

Explore optical laboratory technician education requirements

Most common optical laboratory technician degrees

Bachelor's

29.6 %

Associate

26.0 %

High School Diploma

25.1 %

Start to develop specific optical laboratory technician skills

Skills	Percentages
Equipment Maintenance	58.62%
Prescription Glasses	9.24%
Dexterity	5.25%
Data Entry	5.12%
Patients	4.22%

Complete relevant optical laboratory technician training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 6-12 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New optical laboratory technicians learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as an optical laboratory technician based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real optical laboratory technician resumes.

Research optical laboratory technician duties and responsibilities

Manage filing, scanning & shredding important medical documents in office due to HIPAA privacy laws.
Maintain coating quality using adhesion testing and spectrophotometers, and manage coating hues and reflectance adjustments.
Perform in house testing, controls, correlations, proficiency testing, NCS, PVDT, and EKG.
Transmit orders via POS to the lab.

Prepare your optical laboratory technician resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your optical laboratory technician resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on an optical laboratory technician resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable optical laboratory technician resume templates

Build a professional optical laboratory technician resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your optical laboratory technician resume.