Textile Technologist
NicheAlso known as: Textile Engineer, Materials Technologist, Fabric Technologist
Research, develop, and test textile materials and manufacturing processes for performance, sustainability, and innovation in fabrics.
Salary Range
The highest-paid specialization or seniority level for textile technologists.
About 1 in 13 reaches this level
Estimated ~5,000-8,000 textile technologists in the US (est., no BLS code); ~8% (~400-640) reach director of textile R&D / head of materials innovation at companies like Nike, Gore-Tex, or specialty manufacturers at ~$155,000 total comp.
Salary data based on 2025 BLS, Glassdoor, and industry reports. Actual compensation varies by location, experience, and employer.
How to Become One
This career typically requires a bachelor's degree. Here are the top colleges for it:
Cost to Qualify
Four years of tuition and required fees runs about $56K at a typical public college in our list (in-state) and about $288K at a typical private one. Both are pricier than the US national averages (about $48K public in-state, $180K private nonprofit, College Board 2025-26) because our 161-college dataset only includes nationally-ranked schools, not every US college. This excludes room and board, which we show separately on each college's page.
Sticker price, not what most people pay — scholarships, aid and in-state status all move it. Room and board is shown separately on each college's page.
AI Risk Assessment
Textile technologists research, develop and test fabrics and the processes that make them, for sportswear, medical products, cars and fashion. There is no government count of this job. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) no longer publishes a textile occupation profile, and its closest research category is materials scientists.
AI already does part of the testing side. A 2025 review in the journal Textiles describes fabric quality checks moving from people inspecting cloth by eye to AI camera systems that spot defects faster and more consistently. In our view the lab experiments, material choices and machine trials still need people on site. Two AI-company studies of chatbot use at work rate materials scientists as fairly exposed: Microsoft ranks them 169th of 785 jobs and Anthropic 129th of 756, both in the top quarter. Both companies sell AI.
The bigger threat to this career is not AI. US employment in textile mills fell from about 112,600 in 2017 to about 82,000 in 2025, and was about 78,000 in mid-2026. That decline started long before today's AI tools, and it shrinks the number of US factories that hire textile technologists. BLS projects its closest research job, materials scientists, to grow about 8% from 2025 to 2035.
We raise this from 1 to 2 (Low). The old 1 said AI cannot touch this work, but inspection and data analysis are already being automated, and the research side is about as exposed as other lab science jobs we rate 2. The hands-on lab and factory work keeps it from going higher. What would change the score: AI systems designing and testing new fabrics with little human lab work would push it to 3. The shrinking US textile industry is a real risk for this career, but it is not an AI risk, so it does not change this score.
Sources
Ratings reflect a 10-year outlook based on 2025-2026 research, weighted toward entry-level impact. Individual outcomes will vary.
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