Veterinarian (Vet) Jobs

A vet job, for a veterinarian, is a clinical role for a licensed doctor of veterinary medicine (DVM or VMD): examining and diagnosing patients, performing surgery, prescribing, and leading the care team at an animal hospital.

VeterinaryHires lists veterinary practice jobs only, so the veterinarian jobs above are at general-practice clinics, emergency and specialty hospitals, and veterinary groups.

The listings are a mix of jobs posted directly by practices and jobs gathered from employers' public career pages, and they change daily.

Browsing is free with no account, and Apply takes you to the employer's own application.

Emergency and relief roles have their own pages: emergency veterinarian jobs and relief veterinarian jobs. For the career behind the job, see what does a veterinarian do.

The core opening here is the associate veterinarian job: a staff DVM employed by the practice, seeing appointments, working up cases and performing surgery.

Postings also call it staff veterinarian, small animal veterinarian or companion animal veterinarian, so search more than one title and read the duties.

Associates are the largest group in private practice.

In the AVMA's Census of Veterinarians (2025 AVMA economic report), 57.4% of private-practice veterinarians were associates, 23.8% were owners, 9.1% were relief veterinarians and 7.1% held a medical-director position.

The leadership step goes by titles such as medical director or managing veterinarian. It pairs a caseload with supervising the veterinary team, mentoring associates and keeping the hospital's medical standards current; see becoming a medical director.

Species focus splits the job too. Small animal practice treats dogs, cats and household exotics, while mixed and large animal practice cover farm species and horses, often on the farm rather than in a clinic. Compare them in small animal vs mixed vs large animal practice.

General practice runs on a booked appointment schedule: wellness exams, vaccines, rechecks and a surgery block, with pets and owners you see for years.

It runs to a daytime, weekday schedule by default, though a clinic open evenings or Saturdays needs a veterinarian then.

In the 2025 AVMA economic report, full-time veterinarians in companion-animal-exclusive practice averaged 46.6 hours a week in 2024, the lowest of the private-practice types, against 48.3 hours for all full-time veterinarians.

Emergency hospitals see patients in order of urgency, not arrival. A hospital open overnight or around the clock needs a veterinarian on every shift, so nights, weekends and holidays are part of the rotation. No published figure measures emergency hours; see GP vs emergency practice.

Relief veterinarians cover shifts at practices on a contract or per-diem basis, usually for a day rate, and set their own schedule across hospitals. That rate has to cover what an employer would otherwise pay, such as benefits and self-employment tax; see relief veterinary work.

BLS counts every veterinarian in one occupation, so there is no separate federal wage figure for general practice, emergency or relief work.

The cards below show the same all-veterinarians median for each.

For a first veterinarian job, mentorship is worth weighing alongside pay.

AAHA's 2023 Mentoring Guidelines say a lack of high-quality mentorship remains one of the most common reasons new graduates leave their first practice.

A listing that promises mentorship should be able to say what it means.

AAHA describes a structured program as a matched mentor, a regular meeting schedule, written goals, a way to ask for help right away, and a set time frame with a review point.

Ask for those details in the interview.

On pay, new graduates in companion-animal practice averaged $140,000 in AVMA's Class of 2025 survey; see new-grad veterinarian salary for other practice types and how first offers are structured.