Mechatronics technician salary in Pennsylvania (2026)

How much does a mechatronics technician make in Pennsylvania?

The spread here is wide, and that's the part worth reading closely. Entry-level techs near the 10th percentile start around $49,270, while the middle 50% earn between $59,460 and $82,290. That $23,000 gap inside the middle band is mostly about shift, industry, and how much troubleshooting you own. A tech babysitting a line pays less than one who programs the PLCs and diagnoses the robots.

The top 10% clears $98,750 in Pennsylvania. Those aren't people doing the same job faster. They're usually running automation for pharma, semiconductors, or high-speed food and beverage lines, often with a controls or robotics specialty and a stack of vendor certs behind them. The location quotient of 1.07 tells you the demand is there to support that climb: PA concentrates these roles slightly more than the average state, so the higher-paying seats exist.

Pennsylvania mechatronics salary: BLS vs Salary.com vs Indeed

Three sources, three different numbers. BLS puts the Pennsylvania median at $74,710. Indeed reports an average of $74,167, which lines up closely, but that figure rests on just 5 reported salaries, so treat it as a loose sanity check rather than gospel. Salary.com is the outlier at $58,446, well below both. That gap comes down to method: BLS is a mandatory employer survey of actual wages, Indeed aggregates self-reported pay and job postings, and Salary.com models HR data that can lag the market and sometimes scopes the job more narrowly.

When you're negotiating, anchor to the BLS number. $74,710 is the most defensible figure because it comes from employers reporting real payroll across a full sample, not a handful of postings or a model. Bring the range too: knowing the 75th percentile hits $82,290 gives you room to push if you carry controls or robotics experience.

Job outlook for mechatronics technicians in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania's projection for this occupation is modest: 0.8% growth from 2024 to 2034, edging out the national 0.7% but still basically flat. The headline growth number undersells the real opportunity, though. The state expects about 70 openings a year, and against a base of roughly 880 workers that's driven far more by retirements and people moving into engineering roles than by brand-new positions. Turnover is the door you walk through, not net job creation.

You can dig into the underlying figures at the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry projections page. The takeaway: this is a replacement-demand market, so employers hire steadily even when the total headcount barely moves.

How Pennsylvania compares with nearby states

Inside the Northeast, Pennsylvania sits in the middle of the pack. It trails the region's leaders (Maine at $82,510 and Connecticut at $81,860) by a meaningful margin, but it edges out Massachusetts at $73,630 and clears New York at $68,010 and New Jersey at $60,040. So PA pays fairly for the region, and it does it with the largest tech workforce of any state on this list at 650, which matters when you want options rather than one plant in town.

Who hires mechatronics technicians in Pennsylvania

The Hershey Company runs chocolate and confection plants across Pennsylvania, including its Annville facility, and hires mechatronics technicians to keep high-speed packaging and production lines running. These are classic mechatronics seats: mechanical, electrical, and controls work on automated equipment, often with shift differentials on top of base pay.

Amazon is the other big draw. Its Pennsylvania fulfillment and sortation centers hire Mechatronics and Robotics Technicians to maintain conveyors, robotic sortation, and pneumatic systems. Beyond those two, Pennsylvania's pharma, food and beverage, and packaging plants across the Philadelphia corridor, Lancaster County, and central PA keep steady demand for anyone who can troubleshoot both the machine and the code behind it.

How to earn more as a mechatronics technician in Pennsylvania

Stack the certs that push you past the median

The jump from $59,460 (25th percentile) to $82,290 (75th) in Pennsylvania is mostly about specialized skill, not seniority. PLC programming, robotics, and vendor certs (think Allen-Bradley, Siemens, FANUC) are what move you into the top tier. See which credentials actually pay in our mechatronics certifications guide and build the stack that matches PA's pharma and food-automation employers.

Cross into a higher-paying neighbor

Pennsylvania's $74,710 median is fine, but two Northeast neighbors pay noticeably more. Maine posts a median of $82,510 and Connecticut $81,860, both roughly $7,000 to $8,000 above PA. If you're near a border or open to relocating, that's real money for the same job. Weigh it against cost of living, but the wage gap is worth a look.

Step up to the engineer track

The ceiling for a technician in Pennsylvania is that $98,750 top decile. Controls and automation engineers start above that. If you like the programming and system-design side of the work, the move from tech to engineer is the biggest single raise available. Map the path in our controls engineer guide and the full mechatronics salary guide.

Sources & methodology

Figures on this page come from four independent datasets, retrieved 2026-07-14. Where they disagree, the disagreement is shown rather than averaged away; the source-comparison section explains why each number differs.

• BLS OEWS, SOC 17-3024, May 2025 national and state estimates (state file oesm25st.zip). Employer-reported, the authoritative baseline.
• Salary.com, Mechatronics Technician in Pennsylvania, as of July 1, 2026. HR-reported and modelled averages.
• Indeed, mechatronics technician salaries in Pennsylvania, based on 5 reported salaries. Posting-derived.
• Projections Central, 2024–2034 state occupational projections produced by Pennsylvania's labor market agency (state source).
• Mechatronics technician jobs in Pennsylvania (Indeed)