A laboratory animal technician cares for the animals used in research — feeding, cleaning, health-checking and record-keeping at universities, pharmaceutical companies, contract research organizations and government facilities, alongside laboratory animal veterinarians.
Federal statistics count the work inside the combined Veterinary Assistants and Laboratory Animal Caretakers occupation (SOC 31-9096), and the field's own credential ladder is AALAS certification — ALAT, LAT or LATG — though BLS notes certification is not mandatory to work.
What is a laboratory animal technician?
A laboratory animal technician is the person who keeps research animals fed, clean, healthy and documented — the husbandry backbone of the facilities where universities, pharmaceutical companies, contract research organizations and government agencies run animal studies.
In the federal occupational system the role sits inside Veterinary Assistants and Laboratory Animal Caretakers (SOC 31-9096), which the Bureau of Labor Statistics defines as workers who feed, water and examine pets and other nonfarm animals for signs of illness, disease or injury in laboratories and animal hospitals and clinics.
The title on the badge varies by employer.
O*NET's sample titles for this occupation include Research Animal Attendant, Animal Care Provider and Small Animal Caretaker, and employer classifications add their own variants — the University of New Mexico's entry class, for example, is titled Lab Animal Tech 1.
They all describe one occupation family: hands-on animal husbandry inside a research or clinical institution.
One boundary matters.
This is not the same federal bucket as the kennel attendant's.
SOC 39-2021 (Animal Caretakers) — the code that covers kennel staff, zookeepers and other animal caretakers — explicitly excludes veterinary assistants and laboratory animal caretakers and points them to 31-9096 instead.
The government treats lab animal care as its own line of work, distinct from general pet care.
That distinction also shapes how you read any statistic about this job.
SOC 31-9096 is a combined occupation — veterinary assistants and laboratory animal caretakers — and BLS publishes no separate wage figure for laboratory animal technicians alone.
Every number in this article carries that caveat, and the pay section below shows how to read around it.
What do lab animal technicians do each day?
BLS sums up the daily core for laboratory animal caretakers plainly: feeding animals, cleaning kennels and monitoring animals.
Around that core, the job is observation and paperwork.
The University of New Mexico's Lab Animal Tech 1 job description — a real posted classification — lists basic husbandry, daily health observation, cage cards and records, and pre-surgical treatments performed under a veterinarian's direction, including confirming the correct animal and administering induction drugs at the proper dosages.
That UNM description is also a window into the oversight structure you'd work inside.
Under the Animal Welfare Act regulations (9 CFR 2.32), it is the research facility's responsibility to ensure that scientists, research technicians, animal technicians and other animal-care personnel are qualified to perform their duties, partly by providing training and instruction.
And that training has a defined shape.
For facilities covered by the regulation, it must cover humane animal care and handling, methods that limit animal use or distress, the proper use of anesthetics, analgesics and tranquilizers, and how to report deficiencies in animal care.
At institutions with Public Health Service funding, the institution's Assurance likewise has to describe the training it offers animal technicians and other personnel in humane animal care and use.
Practically: the employer is the one responsible for training you into this job.
The physical part is real
Where they work: universities, pharma, CROs and government
BLS describes the settings directly: veterinary assistants and laboratory animal caretakers work primarily in clinics and animal hospitals, colleges and universities, and research laboratories.
The research side is the slice this page is about — university lab animal programs, pharmaceutical and biotech animal facilities, contract research organizations that run studies for sponsors, and government agencies that operate registered research facilities.
The proportions surprise most people meeting this occupation's data for the first time.
In 2025, 86% of veterinary assistant and laboratory animal caretaker jobs were in veterinary services, 5% in educational services and 1% in scientific research and development services.
Within the same occupation's OEWS industry data, 4,840 jobs sat in colleges, universities and professional schools and 1,260 in scientific research and development services — against 113,220 in the professional, scientific and technical services group that contains veterinary clinics.
Read those figures together and the shape of the job market is clear: research-facility work is a real, distinct and better-paying slice of this occupation — the pay section puts numbers on "better-paying" — but it is the small slice.
Most of the combined occupation works in clinics.
That is why the combined-occupation numbers never quite describe the lab job specifically, and why it pays to read postings carefully.
One thing this page will not do is name specific employers' schedules, pay or hiring requirements.
We have not researched major lab-animal employers' practices at source, so treat any specific claim you see elsewhere with caution — the posting and the interview are the reliable sources for a given facility.
ALAT vs LAT vs LATG at a glance
AALAS — the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science — certifies three levels of technician: Assistant Laboratory Animal Technician (ALAT), Laboratory Animal Technician (LAT) and Laboratory Animal Technologist (LATG).
Certification is not mandatory to work in the field — BLS frames it as a way to demonstrate competency in animal husbandry, health and welfare, and facility administration.
The entry level is ALAT, and its eligibility ladder rewards lab time over education: two years of lab animal work experience with no education requirement, or a high school diploma or GED plus one year, or an associate or bachelor's degree plus six months.
LAT and LATG sit above ALAT on AALAS's three-level ladder.
Certification matters enough to some employers that they write it into the title itself — the University of Missouri System's Laboratory Animal Technician classification requires employees hired without LAT certification to test for it within six months of employment in the title.
That is one employer's rule, not a general requirement, but it shows what a certification requirement looks like when an employer writes one in.
Exam costs, from AALAS's own materials (2026 handbook and certification page):
| Level | Exam fee (2026 handbook) | Member / nonmember price (AALAS site) |
|---|---|---|
| ALAT — Assistant Laboratory Animal Technician | $175 | $175 / $250 |
| LAT — Laboratory Animal Technician | $225 | $225 / $300 |
| LATG — Laboratory Animal Technologist | $275 | $275 / $350 |
The nonmember column is the exam fee plus a $75 processing fee that applies only to nonmembers — the handbook's stated alternative is to join AALAS instead.
If you're coming from clinic work, one eligibility rule changes your math.
AALAS does not count veterinary clinics, zoos or pet stores as "laboratory animal facilities" for certification experience, and it credits non-laboratory animal experience — up to three years — at a rate of six months of non-lab experience for one month of lab animal experience.
Three years of clinic work is therefore worth at most six months of lab credit.
What does count as a laboratory animal facility?
AALAS treats an organization as one automatically if it is USDA-registered as a research facility or licensed as a dealer, files annual animal-use reports with USDA as a state or federal agency, is AAALAC-accredited, or holds an NIH OLAW Assurance.
What certification does not come with is a verified dollar value.
We found no AALAS or BLS figure for what ALAT, LAT or LATG certification adds to pay, so treat it as a competency signal and — at the Missouri example above — a condition of the title, not a raise you can bank in advance.
Do you need to be a credentialed vet tech?
No. The laboratory animal technician role is its own occupation with its own entry bar: BLS says most veterinary assistants and laboratory animal caretakers have a high school diploma or equivalent and learn on the job.
Entry postings reflect that — the University of New Mexico's Lab Animal Tech 1 class requires a high school diploma or GED and at least six months of directly related experience, which may include a college-level practicum.
There is also an apprenticeship route: "Veterinary/Lab Animal Tech" (alternate title Animal Care Specialist) is a U.S. Department of Labor-approved Registered Apprenticeship title under the 31-9096 occupation.
A credentialed veterinary technician is a different job with a different entry path: an associate's degree from a veterinary technology program (a bachelor's for technologists), a credentialing exam, and registration, licensure or certification depending on the state.
That path carries a higher median — $47,380 for veterinary technologists and technicians in May 2025 — but nothing about the lab job requires crossing it first.
The reverse direction is worth knowing too.
For credentialed techs, the one certification requirement we can cite in this field names AALAS rather than the state credential: the Missouri classification above asks for LAT.
That is a single employer's rule, not a pattern.
Shelter and laboratory-animal tech careers compares the two non-clinical paths for credentialed techs, including what each credential requires and how it renews.
How much do laboratory animal technicians make?
Start with the honest caveat: BLS publishes no wage series for "laboratory animal technician."
The occupation is combined with veterinary assistants under SOC 31-9096, so every national figure below describes both groups together — and because 86% of the occupation's jobs sit in veterinary services, the national median is mostly clinic pay.
Here is the combined occupation's national picture (BLS OEWS, May 2025): 126,580 jobs, a mean wage of $19.39 an hour or $40,340 a year, and a median of $18.34 an hour or $38,150 a year.
The middle half earned between $17.15 and $21.98 hourly, or $35,660 to $45,710 annually.
The bottom tenth made $14.48 or less hourly ($30,120 or less annually); the top tenth made $23.63 or more hourly ($49,150 or more annually).
The lab-side signal is the industry split.
BLS's Occupational Outlook Handbook puts May 2025 medians at $49,230 in scientific research and development services and $47,860 in educational services, against $37,930 in veterinary services.
That is the closest published read on the research premium — the same occupation, paid by industry, with research and university settings at the top and clinics at the bottom of the three.
It is still a combined-occupation figure: those industry medians include any veterinary assistants working in those industries too.
On outlook, BLS projects employment of the combined occupation to grow 9% from 2025 to 2035, with about 23,200 openings projected each year over the decade, on average.
As with pay, that projection describes the combined occupation rather than lab facilities alone.
Combined occupation — read every figure twice
Career path and ethics questions candidates ask
The ladder inside research runs through AALAS: ALAT to LAT to LATG, gated by documented lab experience, with education shortening the experience requirement.
Beyond certification, the field's oversight structure creates its own neighboring careers.
Every PHS-funded institution's IACUC must include a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine with training or experience in laboratory animal science and medicine — and at the University of New Mexico, even pre-surgical treatments are performed under a veterinarian's direction.
The veterinarian role in this field is a career in its own right: laboratory animal veterinarians are the practice type this whole field works alongside.
For credentialed veterinary technicians there is a parallel specialty track: academy certification for techs in research settings.
VTS laboratory animal covers what that credential involves.
Then the ethics questions — the ones good candidates ask in the interview, and good employers answer plainly.
- Which species will I work with? Ask directly — federal coverage depends on the answer. Since a 2002 amendment, the Animal Welfare Act's definition of "animal" excludes birds, rats of the genus Rattus and mice of the genus Mus bred for use in research. PHS Policy, meanwhile, applies to all PHS-conducted or supported activities involving animals, wherever performed — so institutions with PHS funding carry a second layer of oversight.
- What training will I actually get? The answer should be concrete. Under the AWA regulations, covered facilities must train animal-care personnel in humane care and handling, methods that limit animal use or distress, the proper use of anesthetics, analgesics and tranquilizers, and how to report deficiencies in animal care — and PHS-funded institutions must describe their training in humane animal care and use in their Assurance.
- What happens if I report a welfare concern? The regulation is explicit: no facility employee, committee member or laboratory personnel may be discriminated against or subjected to any reprisal for reporting violations of the Animal Welfare Act regulations or standards.
Find laboratory animal technician jobs
Two search realities shape this hunt.
First, titles scatter: postings for this work appear under several titles — laboratory animal technician, Research Animal Attendant (an O*NET sample title), New Mexico's Lab Animal Tech 1 and similar variants — so search several titles, not just one exact phrase.
Second, VeterinaryHires does not publish a separate count of laboratory animal technician listings; as of October 22, 2026 the board carried 13,218 live veterinary job openings overall, and research-facility roles sit alongside clinical postings rather than in their own bucket.
A board-wide search is the way in — it covers every posting, clinical and research alike.
It is also worth checking the lab animal program or animal research office pages of institutions near you directly.
And because AALAS eligibility runs on documented lab time at a qualifying facility, landing the first research-facility job — at any level — is the step that starts the clock on the certification ladder above.