‘What’s a UK job that pays well but most wouldn’t realise?’ – 21 career tips to either inspire you or have you kicking yourself you didn’t think of it sooner

When we think of jobs that pay the biggest bucks, we tend to imagine roles like lawyer or hedge fund manager or airline pilot. However, it turns out that there are some very high earning careers that are completely flying under the radar. Over on the AskUK subreddit, user awildwildlife asked this:

And lots of people chipped in with occupations that will have you questioning whether you need a change from your current 9 to 5.

1.

‘My brother has a friend who’s making thousands off managing the social media accounts of niche football influencers. He monitors 5 or 6 accounts that have around 10k followers each so not even crazy, but they pay him crazy money for it.’
–everythingsstatic

2.

‘Got a mate who works with dry risers and sprinklers but he literally just checks them. Showed me his pay check once and it was £6.6K in a month. He does carry tools with him but it’s few and far between he actually has to fix anything.’
–StationAmbitious7717

3.

‘The workers you see digging up the roads to repair gas mains. I think a lot of people view it as an unskilled manual job. When in a busy year (winter mainly) you’ll find many that are on 70-80k. A couple of years ago when short staffed, a couple of teams made over 100k as they worked OT in the night and had the day off on paid rest. Hard work and a lot of hours mind.’
–Due_Ad_2411

4.

‘Any professional job in construction working for a Tier 1 main contractor, Project Manager, Quantity Surveyor, Estimator, Planner etc, can be up to £80k and beyond.’
–Mikeytee1000

5.

‘Scaffolders: especially owning a firm. It is a significant initial outlay and storage costs (need somewhere to keep it or any spare bits when it’s not out on hire) but it’s incredibly lucrative after that. You do have to find some really noisy people to work for you though, not sure how hard that is. They should not be able to sing but should be keen on trying, and you’ll need a really loud portable stereo as well as a lot of poles etc.’
–capnpan

6.

‘Engineer that works on offshore wind farms. (Possible to get in after doing some courses)

‘Also in general off shore related professions e.g skipper for CTV (crew transfer vessel), £250-350 a day for contracts which are 3 weeks on 3 weeks off. There are tax reliefs if you are at sea over certain number of months a year.’
–Majestic_Owl2618

7.

‘Painting pylons. If you’re average, at a minimum you should be making 40-45k (that’s 10 years ago mind.) Good painters will make 50-60 easy. Must be good with heights though.’
–Choccybizzle

8.

‘Royal Air Force, as an engineer if you are based down south and get subsided housing costs for you and your family, you will save £10k+ a year in rental costs, put this alongside serving for 6-7 years you would earn close to £40k plus bonuses depending on deployments, a pension you don’t contribute to, you’d need to earn £55k+ outside of the RAF to match.

‘Also noting, this is a job you can walk into without any specialist qualifications or experience, tick the boxes with GCSEs and pass the required stages.’
–Alarmed_Ice_272

9.

‘Poultry farm manager. Best friend who manages a 12 shed site gets 43k base, a fully paid for onsite three bedroom house (no bills whatsoever), farm has a truck he’s free to use whenever, and can easily clear another 8k in crop bonuses a year.’
–GuybrushFunkwood

10.

‘Abattoir workers earn more than you’d think.’
–CuriousThylacine

11.

‘Tech is obviously known to be very well paid. But tech sales can get absolutely ridiculous, with a 90-120k base and easily the same on top as a bonus depending on performance. Just talking to people and selling them shit they don’t need.’
–eth0izzle