AV Lead Technician
Organizations and businesses of all sizes and types are running AV teams to ensure that their broadcasting, communication, and video conferencing projects are completed without issue. As an AV Lead Technician, you may be the one with the final responsibility in ensuring that all those multimedia needs are met.
Job Description & Responsibilities
The lead technician is, as the title suggests, the head of the AV technician team. As such, they are in charge of making sure their team installs, configures, and operates AV technologies to produce the highest quality broadcasts possible. They are also responsible for ensuring that duties such as maintenance, troubleshooting, and making improvements in systems are carried out.
The scale of the lead technician’s job depends mostly on the size of the AV team that they’re leading. The duties may also change depending on whether they are working with internal teams or with external clients. However, here are a few duties that are common:
- Creating maintenance and troubleshooting guides and schedules for AV equipment
- Creating positioning plans for audio, video, and lighting equipment layouts.
- Delegating tasks amongst the rest of the AV technician team.
- Operating system control software for AV devices.
- Managing job and broadcast sites.
- Interacting with clients or colleagues and interpreting their needs.
- Training and developing other AV technicians on the team.
Qualifications & Skills
An AV Lead Technician rarely needs more than a high school diploma. Most AV technicians who progress to this stage usually do so through on-the-job training and certification. However, a bachelor’s degree is widely recommended, especially in fields like audio-visual production, video production, and multimedia operations.
As a lead technician enjoys a high-level job in the industry, they are also expected to have a much higher level of experience, often as much as up to 5 years in AV specific fields of work. Furthermore, they must have a passion when it comes to multimedia and tech. As the field is always updating from a tech standpoint, technicians must show an ability to keep up with those developments. Here are some other skills an AV lead technician should have.
- Leadership and delegation abilities
- Troubleshooting skills
- Project management skills.
- Risk assessment skills.
- Office software usage.
- Expertise in AV hardware and software.
- Excellent interpersonal and communication skills
- Audio recording, video recording, lighting, and cabling skills.
Certifications
What separates AV lead technicians from other technicians? It’s a matter of experience, expertise, and qualification. Beyond the years you’ve been in the industry, certifications are the most effective way of showing those qualifications. They are a clear demonstration that you have the aptitudes you need and, when looking for roles on Field Engineer, they can help you apply to the most demanding and lucrative positions. Here are the certifications an AV lead technician should consider:
- CTS
- CTS-D
- Crestron
- Extron
- CEDIA
Job Outlook
The roles available for audio visual technicians of all levels, including lead technicians, is expected to grow by 8% from 2016 until 2026, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). As new media continues to make recording and broadcasting more broadly available, more organizations are going to need experts who know the tech on their side.
AV Lead Technicians lead a team but in a variety of different environments. As such, they may be working primarily to the needs of other departments internally within an organization or they may instead work to meet the specific needs of external clients.
When working as a freelance AV lead technician, your role may grow considerably depending on the nature of the work. Clients may hire you to work as part of their own AV team, or they may require you to handle their AV needs on your own. Primarily, this means choosing the right technologies, setting them up, and making sure that they’re fully calibrated to operate as effectively as possible.
Pay Scale
According to PayScale.com, the average salary for an AV lead technician is around $50k but can grow to as much as $69k a year depending on any expertise or experience earned over time.
As such, self-employed AV lead technicians would need to charge a rate of around $20 in order to achieve the equivalent kind of annual earnings. Hourly earnings can range from anywhere between $15 and $28 roughly.
If you want to see what your own skills, experience, and certifications as an AV lead technician are worth, then Field Engineer can give you the up-close look at the market that you need. Simply join us, upload your resume, and see which projects best suit your skills and experience.
