Kiln firer
Also called kiln man, kiln hand, kiln woman
Kiln firers operate kilns in order to fire decorations or glazes. They determine the level and uniformity of oven temperature, regulate the temperature, and give directions to a helper in preparing firebox and lighting fires.
What you'd do
Glass and ceramics plant operators · ILO- Operating and monitoring glass-making furnaces to make glass by melting and fusing pre-mixed ingredients
- Tending hot- or cold-end spray equipment used to coat glassware with surface hardener
- Operating and maintaining machines that press or blow molten glass in moulds to form or shape containers, such as bottles, jars and drinking glasses
- Operating hand press to mould glass into required shape
- Operating drawing kiln to process molten glass into continuous sheet of flat glass
- Operating and monitoring floating-glass production plant
- Operating and maintaining finishing machines to grind, drill, sand, bevel, decorate, wash or polish glass or glass products
- Setting and operating press machines to mould ceramic articles from moist clay
- Operating machines to mix clay with water to knead it into a suitable plastic condition or semi-liquid form for making ceramic products
- Operating and monitoring kilns which bake pottery, porcelain ware bricks and tiles
- Operating and monitoring machines for making glaze or abrasives
- Operating and monitoring machines which extrude molten glass to form fibreglass filaments
- Observing finished products to identify splits, cracks, breaks, colour and other imperfections
- Indoors
- On your feet most of the day
- Lots of contact with people
- Some freedom to decide
- Usually 40 hours a week
- Deadlines most weeks
- Some repetitive tasks
Will there be jobs?
Limited prospectsFewer jobs than in most work will need filling by 2035.
Solid: measured. Dashed: forecast.
What does it pay?
About averagePay depends a lot on the country: from about €1,000 a month (Bulgaria) to €5,500 (Denmark), before tax.
Pick a country at the top of the page to see typical pay there, for people under 30, and compared with all jobs.
Among plant and machine operators, and assemblers in the EU, women earn 21% less per hour than men. Plant and machine operators, and assemblers · Eurostat
What do I need to study?
Upper secondary or vocationalUpper secondary or vocational training is the usual route.
Pick a country at the top of the page to see where to study and the official course finders.
Will AI change it?
Very littleAI could help with only small parts of the tasks.
Average task score 0.17 on a scale from 0 (AI can't do it) to 1 (AI could do it fully).
See the score for each of the 13 tasks
Based on what AI could technically do when assessed in 2025. It is not a forecast for a future year, and not a forecast of job losses. Scores for glass and ceramics plant operators. Source: ILO (2025), adapted (credits).