Alexander Daniels Global has released the 2026 Additive Manufacturing Salary Survey, marking a decade of tracking how talent, compensation, and workforce priorities are evolving across the global AM industry. Now in its 10th edition, the report offers one of the most comprehensive views yet into how additive manufacturing is transitioning from innovation-led growth to operational maturity.

Drawing on global survey data, LinkedIn workforce analysis, and contributions from industry leaders, the 2026 report arrives at a pivotal moment. After several years of market turbulence, consolidation, and cautious hiring, the AM sector is showing clear signs of stabilization — with talent strategies, salary growth, and role demand increasingly shaped by scalability, production readiness, and long-term viability.

From Hype to Execution: How AM Hiring Is Changing

One of the most striking themes in the 2026 survey is the industry’s shift away from a purely R&D-driven workforce. While engineering and development roles remain critical, companies are now prioritizing the people and processes required to run AM at scale.

For the first time, production has become the most in-demand discipline, with 75% of AM companies planning to hire in this area. This reflects the growing adoption of additive manufacturing for end-use parts, where reliability, throughput, quality control, and operational consistency matter just as much as technical innovation.

Alongside Production, Applications and Consulting roles continue to expand, evolving from reactive technical support into specialized, hybrid technical–commercial positions such as Solutions Engineers, Applications Specialists, and Customer Success Engineers. These roles sit at the intersection of customer enablement, application development, and long-term retention — underscoring how value creation in AM is increasingly customer-centric.

Salary Growth Returns to Sustainable Patterns

The 2026 report shows that salary growth across the AM industry has returned to more stable, long-term patterns following the volatility of recent years. In 2025, North America led global salary growth at 7.8%, followed by EMEA at 6.8%, while APAC returned to positive territory with 3.7% growth after last year’s decline.

Notably, Software recorded the strongest global salary increase at over 16%, overtaking Sales for the first time in several years. Production, Applications & Consulting, and Sales also saw solid gains — reinforcing the industry’s focus on automation, workflow integration, and production-scale performance.

The report also highlights how demand is becoming more differentiated by region and discipline. Applications & Consulting salaries grew in every region — a distinction no other function achieved — while some traditionally strong areas, such as Sales in EMEA and APAC, experienced modest declines as markets adjusted and matured.

What Professionals Want Has Changed

Beyond compensation, the 2026 survey reveals important shifts in what motivates AM professionals to change roles. While salary remains the top driver, its influence is declining relative to other factors.

Career progression, leadership quality, and job stability are now nearly as important as pay, reflecting a workforce that is more cautious, selective, and focused on long-term growth. Flexibility and transparency have also become central to offer acceptance, often influencing decisions as much as compensation itself.

Upskilling priorities further reinforce this trend. More than half of respondents identified “Business & the Wider Market” as a key area for development, alongside strong interest in people management and operations. As AM organizations grow in complexity, professionals are signaling the need to bridge technical expertise with commercial and operational capability.

What’s New in the 2026 Edition

To reflect these shifts, the 2026 Salary Survey introduces several important updates:

• Expanded Production salary benchmarks, covering a broader range of roles beyond machine operators and technicians
• New Operations salary data, including quality, supply chain, and production planning professionals
• UK salaries are reported separately from EMEA, providing clearer regional insight and benchmarks in GBP
• A streamlined structure focused on actionable data, with non-essential sections removed to get readers straight to the insights that matter most.

The result is a sharper, more practical resource for employers benchmarking compensation, professionals planning their next career move, and investors seeking to understand how talent trends reflect the broader industrialization of additive manufacturing.

A Data-Driven View of AM’s Next Phase

Taken together, the findings of the 2026 Additive Manufacturing Salary Survey point to an industry entering a new phase — one defined less by exuberant forecasts and more by execution, scalability, and measurable impact.

As AM becomes further embedded in industrial workflows, the professionals who can connect R&D to production, improve operational efficiency, and translate technology into real-world business outcomes are in the highest demand — and command the highest premiums.

The 2026 Additive Manufacturing Salary Survey is now available to download from Alexander Daniels Global, offering a detailed snapshot of where the AM talent market stands today — and where it is heading next.