Story by Brian Rosenzweig
Photos by Claire Jessen
Graphics by Bonnie Zhang
They’ll tell you there’s a certain thrill that comes with it. The feeling of being on top of the world, when the wind whips uninterrupted across your face, the birds glide at your height, and the treeline sinks below your eyesight.
“It’s incredible. It’s almost euphoric,” said Dartagnan Suchar, a tower technician who’s climbed towers as tall as 1,000 feet. “It’s just truly an experience, and you get paid to do something you love.”
Tower technicians are the unsung stars of the digital age. Across the country, technicians manually scale towers ranging anywhere from 50 to 2,000 feet for broadcast towers to inspect, repair and conduct routine maintenance on tower equipment – all with little more than 30 pounds of gear on.
To many, it’s an almost impossible job to fathom. But for many tower technicians, so is a 9-to-5 desk job.
Suchar, for example, is a University of Pittsburgh graduate who studied chemical engineering, but scoffed at the idea of spending his 20s in an office.
His coworker, Calvin Bruns, turned to tower climbing six months after graduating from Appalachian State University with a major in hospitality when he realized that managing a country club wasn’t his speed.
“I liked my nights and weekends, and that’s pretty much all that hospitality is,” Bruns said.
When over a phone call, Bruns received an opportunity from his brother to become a tower technician at his Raleigh-based company Tower Engineering Professionals, he realized the career fit perfectly with much of what he’d come to love in college.
“He was like, if you want to be outside all the time, and travel the country and get to climb things, we’ve got an opening here,” Bruns said. “I was like, man, that sounds perfect.”
These career changes may seem odd, risky or out of the blue, but they’re more logical than first impressions may suggest. As a vital role in the digital economy, tower technicians earn an annual wage $5,000 more than the national average, and often enjoy expensed dining and travel cross-country – all for a job that can be achieved without a higher education degree or a lengthy trade certification process.
Which is why, as college enrollment declines across the country, and 5G beckons a new wave of business opportunities for the industry, tower climbing is emerging as an increasingly valuable field. And folks like Bruns are eager to help teach the next generation of tower technicians like him, who love the climb.
Why people climb
The first thing to know about the tower technician industry is that it’s a remarkably niche field. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are fewer than 14,000 tower technicians in the United States, less than the population of Boone and Southern Pines.
Because the role is so niche, yet vital, the pay is fitting. Nationally, tower technicians make an average of $62,500 a year. In North Carolina, which is the fifth-largest employer of tower technicians, they make an average wage of $56,180 a year, compared to the statewide average wage of $53,100.
Not bad for what’s technically an entry-level job.
According to Zippia, which sources its information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and user-submitted information, 15% of tower technicians hold a bachelor’s degree; 20% hold an associate’s, while 40% have a high school diploma or GED.
Jonathan MacEldowney, the broadcast inspection manager for Stainless at FDH Infrastructure Services in Raleigh, said he values skill over formal prior education.
“If you do good work, and again, you’re dependable, then I don’t really care that you didn’t get a bachelor’s degree in engineering,” MacEldowney said.
Yet there are efforts in the industry to make training a more comprehensive educational process completed before climbers are hired. One such group spearheading this movement is Bruns’ company, Tower Engineering Professionals.
Just outside of Tower Engineering Professionals’ Raleigh office sit three distinct cell towers, all cropped at 50 feet.
At first glance, these towers seem strangely small, their metal heads most often seen from miles away, at heights ranging 100-200 feet. Yet as you come closer, you realize how tall 50 feet – the equivalent of almost four stories – is. Then, you imagine climbing that height with a harness and carabiner.
“We can work with any type of person, but afraid of heights is just the one thing for this job that’s impossible,” Kyle Edwards, who teaches TEP’s Telecommunications Tower Technician Certification course, said. “We’ve had people join and get hired on saying they’re not afraid of heights, but you’ll quickly be tested for that.”
The Telecommunications Tower Technician class is an eight week-long course offered through Wake Technical Community College in Raleigh. It’s the only certification course of its kind in North Carolina, and one of only three community college tower technician courses in the United States.
Unlike most certification training in the field, the Wake Tech class begins with a week of comprehensive classroom safety training before prospective climbers gear up. From there, climbers learn the ropes, literally, of scaling towers, securing equipment and manning rescues if another team member is in peril.
In addition to being a major asset to new climbers, Edwards said the class also helps TEP to recruit new employees at a particularly vital time for the industry.
Edwards said the rollout of 5G across major networks since 2019 and the increased demand for e-commerce and digital communication since the pandemic meant tower technicians enjoyed remarkable job stability during the pandemic, and have only seen increases to business since.
And while technicians come from a wide range of backgrounds, Edwards said North Carolina’s climbing culture means it’s a state where it’s easier to find the right person for the job.
“North Carolina is pretty young, and it kind of attracts the kind of people who’d be interested in this job, so it’s a good market for finding tower climbers,” Edwards said. “Especially when we were a newer company, we’d be hanging flyers in rock climbing gyms all over the place.”
On a warm day in early February, Julia Yan, a new addition to TEP’s team, gears up for a rescue training course taught by Bruns at TEP’s outdoor facility.
A recent civil engineering graduate from North Carolina State University who grew up rock climbing, Yan shares a similar history with technicians like Bruns and Suchar who turned to tower climbing after their undergraduate years. But as a woman in an industry that, according to Zippia, is 96.9% male, Yan’s journey is particularly notable, and a potential harbinger for new generations of climbers.
“From what I’ve seen in my first week alone, I’m the only girl in the class,” Yan said. “But I also think it’s just very niche.”
Within her first week of training, Yan said she’s observed the stark gender differences in the industry. She also doesn’t seem fazed by it.
When Bruns teaches new climbers, he talks about the “three confidences” they need to have when climbing: confidence in the structure, confidence in the gear and confidence in themselves.
“That confidence to be at height just comes from being at height and not realizing,” Bruns said. “And then once you realize that you weren’t thinking about being that high, that gives you a little bit more confidence.”
As Yan trains in tower climbing for the first time, she’s open about the fear that comes with it. But as a lifelong climber like Bruns, Suchar and countless other tower technicians in the field, she’s confident.
“I’ve never done it before, so I don’t know how it’s gonna feel,” Yan said. “But I’ve been talking to more experienced people, and they’re like, ‘At a certain point, it all just looks the same.’”
So when Bruns calls Yan’s name from across the outdoor facility and asks if she’s up to a new challenge, with little more than a moment’s hesitation, she latches in and begins to climb.
