Metallbauer/in (Metalworker / Structural Smith)

Fabricates and installs metal structures — gates, railings, staircases, balconies, facades, vehicle bodies. The Handwerk counterpart to Konstruktionsmechaniker, with lower pay and one thing the industrial trade cannot offer: a business of your own.
Official title Metallbauer/in
Historical term Schlosser — still in daily use, and in the word Schlosserei for the workshop
Protected title Employment: no. Self-employment: yes — Handwerksordnung Anlage A
Category skilled-trades
Typical qualification Duale Ausbildung, 3.5 years, HWK exam
Regulated Meisterpflicht for self-employment
Last reviewed 2026-09

The pairing

Metallbauer/in Konstruktionsmechaniker/in
System Handwerk, HWK Industrie, IHK
Anlage A Yes — Meisterpflicht —
Self-employment Meisterbrief opens a business No business rights
Employer Schlossereien, small metal shops Stahlbau firms, shipyards, plant builders
Entry pay €2,700 – €3,200 €3,200 – €3,800
Work Building metalwork, customer-facing, varied Structural steel, series and large fabrication

Roughly €500/month apart at entry for related work — the same gap as Elektroniker EGT vs Betriebstechnik, and the same trade-off. The Handwerk route buys the legal path to ownership; the industrial route buys money now.

Which suits you depends on one question: do you intend to run your own shop? If yes, the Handwerk route is the direct one. If no, the industrial side pays better for comparable skill.

Fachrichtungen

Fachrichtung Focus
Konstruktionstechnik By far the most common: steel structures, staircases, railings, balconies, gates, metal doors and facades
Metallgestaltung Artistic and architectural smithing, restoration of historic ironwork — the Kunstschmied tradition. A small, distinctive niche with correspondingly thin pay
Nutzfahrzeugbau Commercial vehicle bodies, trailers, tipper and box bodies

What the job involves

Measuring on site, working from drawings, cutting and forming steel, stainless and aluminium, welding, assembling — and then installing, usually at the customer’s building. Unlike the industrial trades, much of the day involves being in someone’s house, shop or building site, so customer contact is constant and the work is highly varied: a staircase one week, a fire door the next.

EN 1090 applies here too. A Handwerk firm producing load-bearing structure — balconies, steel staircases, canopies — needs the same certified welding coordination and factory production control as an industrial fabricator. Small shops sometimes learn this uncomfortably late; if you plan to own one, it is a real cost of entry.

Welding qualifications to DIN EN ISO 9606 matter for the same reasons as in Konstruktionsmechanik, if usually across a narrower range of processes.

Qualification route

  • 3.5 years dual, Betrieb plus Berufsschule, Handwerkskammer exam
  • Entry: formally open; Hauptschul- or mittlerer Schulabschluss typical
  • Paid throughout: roughly €900–1,250/month gross, with wide regional variation
  • Ends with the Gesellenprüfung
  • Then: the Metallbauermeister, required to run a business, funded by Aufstiegs-BAföG with a state Meisterprämie in several Bundesländer

Pay

Handwerk levels — market estimates, not tariff-verified:

Stage Gross/month
Geselle, newly qualified €2,700 – €3,200
Geselle, experienced €3,200 – €3,900
With sought-after welding certificates €3,500 – €4,200
Metallbauermeister (employed) €4,000 – €5,000
Meister with own Schlosserei Highly variable; a well-run shop outearns the employed ceiling

As across the Handwerk, ownership is the real earnings lever, not seniority. Small metalworking shops with an order book and no successor are common, which makes Betriebsübernahme a realistic route for an ambitious Meister — the same dynamic as SHK.

Demand

Solid and construction-linked: renovation, balcony and facade work, safety and fire-door installation, and metal substructures for solar and building-services retrofits. The workforce is ageing and small shops struggle to recruit, so bargaining power for a qualified Geselle is better than the pay levels suggest.

Metallgestaltung is the exception — genuinely niche, and best entered with eyes open.

Foreign candidates

  1. To be employed: no recognition legally required.
  2. To be self-employed: Handwerksrolle entry, normally via the Meisterbrief, or an equivalence decision, an Ausnahmebewilligung (§8 HwO), or an employed Betriebsleiter. EU/EEA nationals use the easier §9 HwO route.
  3. Equivalence sits with the Handwerkskammer under the BQFG — not IHK FOSA.
  4. Welding certificates do not transfer; expect to re-sit to EN standards.
  5. Language: B1–B2, and realistically toward B2. This trade is in customers’ buildings daily — measuring, explaining, agreeing changes — so it is more language-dependent than the industrial metal trades.
  6. Visa: skilled-worker route with recognition, or §16a to train here.

Pitfalls

  • Employment needs no recognition; self-employment does. The standard Anlage A split.
  • EN 1090 certification is a genuine cost for a small shop making load-bearing work.
  • The industrial side pays more for comparable skill — know what you are trading away.
  • Fachrichtung shapes the career: Metallgestaltung is artistically satisfying and economically thin.
  • “Schlosser” in an advert is this trade, or sometimes industrial maintenance. Check.

Sources

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