Welding career pathways in Australia
How to get into welding, and how to keep moving once you are in. Four routes, written for the person deciding rather than for the person selling the course. Nothing on these pages is behind a form.
How to become a welder
The real routes in: apprenticeship, adult traineeship, short courses, and starting on the tools and qualifying later. What a welding ticket is and when you actually need one.
The apprenticeship, explained
The training contract, how long it takes, how you get paid while you learn, how competency based completion works, and how to find an employer who will take you on.
Welding supervisor
Off the tools and accountable for other people’s welds. What the job involves, the theory you have to learn, the certification, and the order to do it in.
The shape of a welding career
Welding is one of the few trades where the ladder is genuinely visible from the bottom. It runs roughly like this, and each step is built on the one before rather than replacing it.
- Get competent. A trade qualification, usually through an apprenticeship. This is the foundation and it is worth doing properly.
- Get certified. A trade qualification says you were trained. A welder certificate says you were examined, in a specific process and configuration, and that the result is on a register somebody can check. AS 1796 certification.
- Widen the range. More certificate categories means more processes, more materials and more positions, which means more of the work on any given site is work you are allowed to do.
- Take responsibility. Welding supervision. You stop being measured on your own welds and start being measured on the shop’s.
- Or take the judgement role. Welding inspection. You decide whether work passes, against a code, in writing, with your name on it.
Plenty of people stop at step three and earn very well doing it. Positional pipe welding on high pressure work is skilled, in demand, and paid accordingly. Moving up is not the only measure of a career.
One piece of advice worth acting on early
Do the common theory sooner than you think you need it
Welding process technology, welding metallurgy, and weld testing and inspection is one body of knowledge, completed and examined once, and it underpins welding supervision under AS 1796 and AS 2214.
Doing it while you are still on the tools keeps your options open and means it never has to be started from the beginning later. It is also the single hardest thing to find time for once you have supervision responsibilities. Training and examination.
The words people use, and what they mean
| What people say | What it actually is |
|---|---|
| A welding ticket | A welder certificate, in Australia usually issued against AS 1796, covering a defined process, material, position and thickness range. Held by a person, time limited, verifiable. |
| A trade certificate | A vocational qualification, normally a Certificate III in an engineering fabrication trade, awarded by a training provider. Evidence of training, not of examined welding skill in a specific category. |
| A welding licence | Not a thing in Australia. Welding is not a licensed occupation the way electrical work is. What people mean is either a ticket or a trade qualification. |
| A qualified welding procedure | A document, not a person. It records that a welding method has been proven to produce sound welds within defined limits. Why this matters. |
| Coded welder | Informal shorthand, mostly imported from the United Kingdom, for a welder holding a current qualification to a code or standard. Ask which code and which range, because the phrase on its own tells you nothing. |
If you are already working
Two situations come up constantly and both have a route.
You have been welding for years with no formal qualification. That experience counts. Skills recognition, sometimes called recognition of prior learning, assesses what you can already do against the units in a qualification so you only train and get assessed on the gaps. Any training provider delivering the fabrication trade qualification can explain their process. For certification, AS 1796 has a documented experience route as an alternative to holding a Certificate III.
You qualified overseas. Overseas trade qualifications and welder qualifications are often accepted in principle and still need Australian evidence, either through a skills assessment or by testing to the standard your employer works to. If your qualification is to ISO 9606 it is a recognised standard, and it is not automatically the same thing as an AS 1796 certificate. Ask AWI what a specific overseas certificate is worth here before paying for a full retest.