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Trainee vs lead technician

The differences between trainees and lead technicians can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. It typically takes 1-2 years to become both a trainee and a lead technician. Additionally, a lead technician has an average salary of $90,615, which is higher than the $39,185 average annual salary of a trainee.

The top three skills for a trainee include customer service, CDL and training programs. The most important skills for a lead technician are java, architecture, and digital transformation.

Trainee vs lead technician overview

TraineeLead Technician
Yearly salary$39,185$90,615
Hourly rate$18.84$43.56
Growth rate5%10%
Number of jobs51,490250,590
Job satisfaction--
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 56%Bachelor's Degree, 50%
Average age4342
Years of experience22

What does a trainee do?

Trainees' general responsibility is to familiarize themselves with the best practices and processes of their chosen careers. Some of the trainee's duties include shadowing with a tenured employee to understand various tasks, taking practical examinations to test knowledge extent, maintaining the eagerness to learn and a positive working attitude, assisting with customer inquiries, escalating concerns, and maintaining record progress. A trainee should be a team player, a fast learner, and the ability to handle constructive criticisms for improvement.

What does a lead technician do?

Lead technicians are technicians who oversee the technical needs of a specific project or department. They are usually tenured employees, and their familiarity with the company's technical and technological processes, software, and hardware would be a great advantage in succeeding in their role. Lead technicians are responsible for installing, updating, and maintaining various software and hardware components in the office. They often manage a group of technicians, and they ensure that the group they manage is properly trained and well-versed on the processes of the company. Lead technicians are expected to have strong analytical skills and decision-making skills.

Trainee vs lead technician salary

Trainees and lead technicians have different pay scales, as shown below.

TraineeLead Technician
Average salary$39,185$90,615
Salary rangeBetween $27,000 And $55,000Between $67,000 And $121,000
Highest paying CityRichmond, CASan Francisco, CA
Highest paying stateHawaiiCalifornia
Best paying companyClifford ChanceMeta
Best paying industryFinanceRetail

Differences between trainee and lead technician education

There are a few differences between a trainee and a lead technician in terms of educational background:

TraineeLead Technician
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 56%Bachelor's Degree, 50%
Most common majorBusinessComputer Science
Most common collegeStanford UniversityMassachusetts Institute of Technology

Trainee vs lead technician demographics

Here are the differences between trainees' and lead technicians' demographics:

TraineeLead Technician
Average age4342
Gender ratioMale, 56.4% Female, 43.6%Male, 83.4% Female, 16.6%
Race ratioBlack or African American, 7.9% Unknown, 5.0% Hispanic or Latino, 11.6% Asian, 13.8% White, 61.4% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.3%Black or African American, 10.4% Unknown, 5.3% Hispanic or Latino, 15.1% Asian, 15.1% White, 53.6% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.4%
LGBT Percentage9%11%

Differences between trainee and lead technician duties and responsibilities

Trainee example responsibilities.

  • Establish and manage Microsoft SharePoint services to servers to achieve higher productivity for each project.
  • Design scripts to automate the build of developer, QA, and production servers.
  • Accomplish the experiments on PCB layout, core circuit board of hardware via PCB manufacturing.
  • Maintain BOM (bill of materials) and manage the team in maintaining coordination between the customer requirements.
  • Involve using HTML, CSS, PHP, bootstrap, and Jquery throughout the work.
  • Assist in the creation of a python base ArcGIS profile elevation script tool.
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Lead technician example responsibilities.

  • Manage and support the Cisco base corporate remote access VPN solution.
  • Manage the third party IP provider relationship and implement all the bridges between AXI4 and internal buses.
  • Used JIRA to manage the product backlog, tasks assignments, project burn-down rate and for velocity tracking purposes.
  • Manage product test support of new designs used for testing, write technical documentation in HTML improving department processes and procedures.
  • Manage customer functional areas of desktop support, field service, office services and network support to coordinate timely issue resolution.
  • Configure and manage JGroup multicasting communication for apache tomcat web servers.
  • Show more

Trainee vs lead technician skills

Common trainee skills
  • Customer Service, 22%
  • CDL, 9%
  • Training Programs, 9%
  • Work Ethic, 7%
  • Basic Math, 6%
  • Math, 5%
Common lead technician skills
  • Java, 10%
  • Architecture, 7%
  • Digital Transformation, 6%
  • Customer Service, 6%
  • Database, 4%
  • HTML, 3%

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