Job Check
Surveying and Mapping Technicians
Perform surveying and mapping duties, usually under the direction of an engineer, surveyor, cartographer, or photogrammetrist, to obtain data used for construction, mapmaking, boundary location, mining, or other purposes. May calculate mapmaking information and create maps from source data, such as surveying notes, aerial photography, satellite data, or other maps to show topographical features, political boundaries, and other features. May verify accuracy and completeness of maps.
10 main tasks · most important first
Your main tasks and AI
Importance- 01Set out and recover stakes, marks, or other monumentation.Mostly human for now
- 02Search for section corners, property irons, or survey points.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 03Calculate latitudes, longitudes, angles, areas, or other information for mapmaking, using survey field notes or reference tables.AI could speed this up a lot
- 04Enter Global Positioning System (GPS) data, legal deeds, field notes, or land survey reports into geographic information system (GIS) workstations so that information can be transformed into graphic land descriptions, such as maps and drawings.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 05Adjust and operate surveying instruments such as prisms, theodolites, electronic distance measuring equipment, or electronic data collectors.Mostly human for now
- 06Check all layers of maps to ensure accuracy, identifying and marking errors and making corrections.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 07Collect information needed to carry out new surveys, using source maps, previous survey data, photographs, computer records, or other relevant information.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 08Record survey measurements or descriptive data, using notes, drawings, sketches, or inked tracings.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 09Conduct surveys to ascertain the locations of natural features and man-made structures on the Earth's surface, underground, and underwater, using electronic distance-measuring equipment, such as GPS, and other surveying instruments.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 10Prepare topographic or contour maps of land surveyed, including site features and other relevant information, such as charts, drawings, and survey notes.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
Tasks from O*NET® 31.0 (US Department of Labor, CC BY 4.0, changed by us), most important first. “Already use” comes from Anthropic’s data on real work chats with Claude; “could speed up” from task ratings made with GPT-4 in 2023.
Four studies, side by side
None is a forecast of job lossToo little dataNot enough work use was seen to measure. This does not mean the job is safe from AI.Anthropic, 2026
50%of this job’s tasks an AI model could do in half the time, counting tasks that need extra tools as half (rated in 2023).Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin and Rock, 2023
Above 72% of jobsin how often and how well AI helped with this job’s work in Microsoft Copilot chats (2024 data).Microsoft Research (Tomlinson et al.), 2025
Above 68% of jobsin how much of this job’s physical work robots have been shown to do, from factories to homes (2026).Anthropic, 2026
Your human edge
The main tasks with no real AI use seen and no big speed-up expected. This is where your skill counts most today.
- Set out and recover stakes, marks, or other monumentation.
- Adjust and operate surveying instruments such as prisms, theodolites, electronic distance measuring equipment, or electronic data collectors.