Optometric Technician job description
269 verified openings in Optometric & Ophthalmic Technicians
By the time the optometrist opens the exam room door, a patient's history is written up, eye pressure is measured, and the autorefractor reading is on the chart. That pretest work belongs to the optometric technician. BLS reports optometric and ophthalmic technicians on one line, ophthalmic medical technicians. In offices of optometrists, that line had a median of $38,650 in May 2025. Pay on the row ran from under $30,930 for the bottom tenth to over $51,420 for the top tenth. Across all industries the same line's median was $45,570, because physicians' offices and hospitals pay more for it.
Core Duties and Responsibilities
O*NET ranks taking and documenting the patient's medical history first. The measurements follow, rated nearly as high: intraocular pressure by tonometry, visual acuity at near and at distance, axial length and other measurements of the eye, and lens power read off a lensometer. Technicians put in topical eye drops, run visual field tests, and check how well the eye muscles move. The instruments need cleaning, sterilizing, and routine upkeep, and patients new to contact lenses need to be shown how to handle them. Helping someone pick out frames and making small repairs to glasses turn up on the supplemental list.
Common Skills and Technologies
The equipment named in the task list is the working toolkit: autorefractors, phoropters, retinoscopes, tomographs, keratometers, and lensometers. On the software side, employers name ordinary office tools in their postings, Microsoft's spreadsheet, email, and word processing programs among them, along with medical software as a category. Active listening and speaking top the skills list, followed by reading comprehension, writing, and social perceptiveness.
Education, Training, and Career Path
O*NET puts the job in Job Zone Three. On education, about 59 percent of the technicians in the survey named a high school diploma as what the job needs and about 27 percent a postsecondary certificate. The American Optometric Association's Commission on Paraoptometric Certification offers four credentials: Certified Paraoptometric, Certified Paraoptometric Assistant, Certified Paraoptometric Technician, and Certified Paraoptometric Coder. Ophthalmology has a separate certification ladder for assistants, technicians, and technologists, run by the International Joint Commission on Allied Health Personnel in Ophthalmology.
Sources: O*NET 30.0, 29-2057.00 Ophthalmic Medical Technicians, https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/29-2057.00. BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, 29-2057, https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm. American Optometric Association, paraoptometric certification, https://www.aoa.org/education/paraoptometric-certification.