How to hire a restoration estimator: requirements, pay to offer, where to find them and how to screen

The seat has one core function: it converts what your crews document on a loss — photos, moisture readings, sketches, job notes — into line-item estimates on your pricing platform, at the prices your price list pays on. Around that core, you need supplements written when scope grows after the first estimate, scope defended in adjuster conversations, and estimate files complete enough that your invoice is supported by the documentation behind it.

Define the seat before you write the posting, because "estimator" means different jobs in different shops. A field estimator walks losses and scopes them in person; a desk estimator builds estimates from the documentation your techs and project managers send in. The split matters just as much by work type: mitigation-only volume, reconstruction-heavy files, commercial and large-loss work, and program price-list jobs each pull the role toward different skills and a different day.

Decide these questions in your own operation first. Does this person ride losses or work from a screen? Do they own supplements, or does the project manager? Are they estimating on one price list or several, including program-specific ones? Which loss types will they scope — water, fire and smoke, mold, contents, rebuild? The answers change the posting, the pay, the skills test and the ramp, so hiring starts here, not at the job boards.

Keep the seat distinct from the people around it. An estimator is not your project manager and not your crew lead: PMs run the job, crews run the work, and the estimator owns the numbers and the file. Blur those lines and the estimating workload drifts to whoever has capacity that week — and your documentation standard drifts with it.

If you want the worker-side view of the role before you define your own, what a restoration estimator does is covered in the career guide, including typical duties and where the seat sits in an office. For the wider employer picture around it, start with hiring for your restoration company.

Start with the platform. If your company prices on Verisk's Xactimate, the skill to hire for is hands-on fluency in it: sketching, line items, and the estimate logic your price list pays on. Verisk runs its own certification path at three levels, and each level's exam is listed at USD 120.00 in Verisk's store (accessed October 2026). Each level has three parts — an untimed sketch-and-scope lab plus a timed practical exam and a timed knowledge exam — and each part requires 70% to pass. Treat a certificate as verification of platform mechanics, not of scope accuracy on your jobs; the work sample in the screening section below is what tests scope.

Budget for the subscription regardless of whom you hire. Verisk lists Xactimate at $2,390 for an annual subscription or $1,575 for six months, for one platform — desktop, mobile or online — as of 2026-10-12. The annual subscription also includes unlimited access to more than 100 hours of self-paced training content, per Verisk. That matters for hiring: a construction-literate candidate can be handed the platform plus a structured path to fluency, which widens the pool you can hire from.

Candidates may also list IICRC coursework. The IICRC is a certifying body, not a school: it approves independent schools and instructors that meet its criteria. An IICRC certificate is evidence of damage knowledge, not a license, so weigh it as background and verify it with the IICRC if it matters to your decision.

OSHA cards deserve one line of caution in your posting. OSHA's own Outreach Training Program page says the 10-hour and 30-hour courses are a voluntary program, do not meet the training requirements of any OSHA standard, and are not a certification. You can still require a card as your company's requirement — just describe it as your requirement, not as an OSHA certification.

Licenses are the part employers get wrong, so be precise. The licenses restoration companies deal with attach to the work — state mold assessment and remediation licenses, asbestos accreditation, lead abatement certification — and where such rules apply, they name the companies and the individuals who may perform that work. Read your own state's rules for who must hold them, and ask the state agency that regulates the work in your state what applies to your setup, including how your estimating and documentation process fits in. Never treat a certificate as a license, and never write "no license needed" into a posting on your own guess: a state with no mold license still has contractor licensing, asbestos and lead rules, and OSHA and EPA requirements.

Rules and fees change. Confirm platform certification details with Verisk, coursework with the IICRC, and license questions with the state agency that regulates the work in your state, before any of it goes into a posting or an offer letter.

Anchor your range before you post it. The BLS data this page draws on has no restoration estimator occupation, so the closest published group is cost estimators, SOC 13-1051 — a BLS group that covers estimating across many industries, not restoration pay. In the May 2025 OEWS release, cost estimators had a national median of $37.86 an hour and $78,740 a year, with the 10th percentile at $48,530 and the 90th percentile at $130,820, across 224,220 wage-and-salary jobs in all industries. Treat those figures as a labelled proxy, not a restoration number: your market, your loss mix and the seat you defined in the first section move the real range. The same BLS series is broken down by state on the restoration estimator pay data page.

What moves the rate around that anchor: field versus desk, mitigation-only versus reconstruction-heavy scope, commercial and large-loss work, program price-list estimating, and a documented supplement track record. Publishing a range beats hiding one — and in the states itemized below, it is required.

Pay-range posting rules are state law, and the states this research verified are these. California requires employers with 15 or more employees to include the pay scale in a job posting. New York requires businesses with four or more employees to list a minimum and maximum in advertised jobs and to say if the job is commission-based. Washington requires employers with 15 or more employees to disclose the wage scale or salary range plus a general description of benefits. Illinois requires the pay scale and benefits at 15 or more employees, and a hyperlink can satisfy it. Colorado requires compensation, benefits and how to apply in all postings, and bars asking about an applicant's pay history. That is the list this research verified, not the whole country — check your own state's rule before you post.

Structure matters as much as the number. If you pay the seat a salary, the federal salary level for the executive, administrative and professional exemptions currently reads $684 per week ($35,568 a year) — and salary alone does not make the exemption; the duties have to fit too. If the role is non-exempt and you attach announced production or retention bonuses to estimates, those bonuses are not discretionary: under the FLSA they belong in the regular rate used to compute overtime. Classification is a duties-and-facts question, so confirm the treatment you choose with the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division or employment counsel rather than assuming the job title decides it.

Look inside your own operation first, because the seat rewards context a stranger does not have: your price list, your documentation app, your customers. Coordinators who manage job files, crew leads and technicians who document losses well, and project managers who want off the road are all worth a conversation. The platform gap is the cheapest gap to close: the self-paced training included with an annual Xactimate subscription exists for exactly that. An internal move also opens the seat you backfill behind it, so price both changes before you decide.

Outside the company, source from work that overlaps the skill set: construction estimating, trade and building backgrounds, and office roles heavy on documentation and customer files. What you are really screening for is measurement discipline, documentation habits and comfort defending numbers — the restoration context is teachable, and the habits are harder. Expect applicants whose estimating habits were formed under another company's price list and standards, including people moving between franchise locations, independents and national restorers, and plan your ramp for it.

Post the role where the candidates you want actually look: the general job boards, your own website with the role defined the way the first section defined it, trade and local groups, and a board that lists only restoration work. Ask your own people as well — a referral from a tech or a project manager arrives already briefed on your operation. Whatever mix you choose, the posting should state the platform, the loss types, the field-versus-desk split and the pay terms, so the wrong applicants screen themselves out before they reach you.

One more candidate-side check: read your posting the way an applicant does. See what restoration estimator candidates see on the jobs page — the titles, the loss types and the pay signals they are comparing you against.

Screen on the work, not the resume. The core test is a work sample: hand the candidate a redacted job file from your own archive — photos, moisture readings, sketch, notes — plus time-boxed access to a seat of your estimating software. Have them build an estimate, or critique one you already paid on. Score what the seat actually requires: line-item logic, whether water damage terms are used the way the field uses them (water damage category and class, for instance), documentation gaps flagged instead of glossed, sketch quality, and notes an adjuster could follow without a phone call.

For a desk seat, the critique version is enough: give them a finished estimate plus the field documentation behind it and ask what they would challenge, what is missing and what an adjuster will push back on. For a field seat, add a ride-along: walk a live loss, or even a completed one, with your project manager, and watch how they measure, what they photograph, what they write down and how they talk to the customer. If candidates perform real estimating work as part of your process, remember that the FLSA treats work the employer suffers or permits — and knows or has reason to believe is happening — as hours worked (29 CFR 785.11). Whether a candidate's trial work counts as employment depends on the facts, so ask counsel how you will handle pay for a working interview before you schedule one.

Verify the platform claim separately. Ask which version and platform they used, what they produced on it, and whether they hold a Verisk certification level. The exams are listed at USD 120.00 each in Verisk's store (accessed October 2026) — which also tells you what certifying someone you already employ would cost if you decided to sponsor it. Our research found no industry-wide rule on who pays for certification; treat it as a term of your own offer. What certification does not tell you is whether the person scopes accurately on your price list — that is what the work sample is for.

Then run the lawful-parts checklist.

• Pre-offer questions. Under the ADA, as the EEOC frames it, an employer may not ask applicants medical or disability questions or require a medical exam before a job offer, though it may ask whether and how the candidate can perform the job.
• Ad wording and screening. A job ad may not show a preference for or discourage applicants based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age (40+), disability or genetic information — the EEOC's example is that asking for "recent college graduates" may violate the law.
• Salary history. California generally bars seeking an applicant's pay history, Illinois bars asking about or screening applicants on it, and Colorado bars asking about or relying on it; California and Illinois allow salary-expectation questions instead. Other states were outside this research, so check yours.
• Criminal history. The EEOC allows employers to consider criminal records but not to treat applicants differently by race or national origin when doing so, and state law may restrict how early in the process you may ask — confirm your state's rule with your state labor agency.
• Background reports. If you order a report from a screening company, the FCRA applies: give a written, stand-alone disclosure — not inside the application — and get written permission before you order it. Before rejecting anyone on the report, give a pre-adverse-action notice with a copy of the report and the FTC's "A Summary of Your Rights Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act."

Screening rules are federal and state law, and the state rules vary. Confirm your interview questions, ad wording, salary inquiries and background-check process with counsel or your state labor agency before you run them.

Start with the deadline that has a fixed clock: Form I-9 Section 2 must be completed within three business days of the employee's first day — and for a job lasting fewer than three business days, by the first day. Everything else in the ramp is yours to pace.

Structure the ramp around the file, because the file is the product. Begin on mitigation scopes against your price list, with every estimate reviewed against the field documentation before it leaves the building. Pair the new estimator with your project manager on live files, so supplement and adjuster conversations are modeled rather than invented. Use the self-paced training included with the annual Xactimate subscription to close the specific platform gaps your work sample exposed. And write your own office conventions — how your office names, groups and documents line items — into a one-page standard, so the seat survives its next vacancy.

Keeping the estimator is a seat-design problem more than a perks problem. Keep the field-versus-desk definition you hired against and revisit it as volume changes, because scope creep into project management — or back into crew work — is how the seat quietly becomes something you did not hire. Review pay against the benchmark and your market on a schedule, not only when a resignation forces it. Fund the credentials that compound: the subscription's training content, and any coursework you decide the seat needs for the loss types you take. Agree on what growth looks like — deeper loss types, larger losses, or a production-management path — while the person is productive, not after they have started looking.

This page is employer information, not legal, insurance or wage advice. Classification, pay-posting and screening rules come from the agencies named; confirm yours with the Department of Labor, your state labor agency, your state licensing agencies or counsel before you act on them.