DIRECT HIRE - Machine Operator
Location
Santa Ana, CA
Wage
$40,000 – $42,000/yr
Employment Type
Full-time
Posted on November 10, 2026
Location
Santa Ana, CA
Wage
$40,000 – $42,000/yr
Employment Type
Full-time
Posted on November 10, 2026
The Machine Operator role involves setting up and operating grinding equipment to produce high-quality razor blades in a manufacturing environment. This position emphasizes safety, quality, and efficiency while offering a direct hire opportunity with a reputable company.
At roughly $20/hr, this posting comes in about 45% below the $36/hr median for welding jobs across California, where the middle half runs $30–$49/hr across 379 postings with published pay. Put another way, it pays more than about 1% of the comparable postings we have wage data for. That gap is worth raising directly — in a market this size there is normally room to negotiate toward the median, particularly if you already hold the certifications the posting asks for.
Santa Ana, CA currently has 3 other active welding openings besides this one, spread across 2 employers. None of them were added in the last week, so this is a slower-moving market. Across California as a whole we're tracking 514 other active welding openings from 241 employers. That's enough local activity to be worth comparing two or three offers before committing. Browse every welding job in Santa Ana, or widen the search to California.
The most active employers in California at the moment, by number of open welding reqs, are SpaceX (37), Relativity Space (18), and Welding Shop in Los Angeles, CA (16). Volume like that usually means either a genuine expansion or a staffing agency working several client sites — worth knowing which before you apply.
Within California, the best-paying metros we track by median hourly rate are El Segundo at $53/hr, Pasadena at $50/hr, and Long Beach at $49/hr. If you can relocate or commute, that spread is worth factoring in.
Pay figures are medians computed from live postings in the Welding Pros index, not from survey data, and they move as employers post. DIRECT HIRE - Machine Operator figures were last recalculated when this page was built.