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Fire protection is the best-paid trade we recruit for in Queensland and the one employers understand least. Those facts are related, and the accreditation layer is the reason for both.
SEEK, refreshed 1 September 2026:
Brisbane fire technicians outearn Brisbane electricians, plumbers and refrigeration technicians. The floor is $35,000 above the refrigeration floor in the same city.
That premium exists because the pool is small, and the pool is small partly because of the accreditation requirement sitting on top of ordinary trade licensing.
The Fire Protection Accreditation Scheme (FPAS) is administered by FPA Australia. It accredits practitioners across fire protection disciplines - design, inspection and testing, certification, and fire safety assessment among them.
Three things employers need to understand about it.
1. It is not a trade licence. FPAS sits on top of whatever underlying credential the person holds. A fire technician typically also holds a plumbing, electrical or mechanical credential depending on the systems they work on. Accreditation and licence are separate things, and you need to check both.
2. It is discipline-specific. Accreditation in one area of fire protection does not carry to another. Someone accredited for one class of work is not automatically qualified for a different class.
3. Requirements vary by state and by system type. What is mandated in one jurisdiction for a particular class of work is not necessarily mandated in another. Confirm what your state requires for your specific work rather than assuming a national standard.
Because the scheme's specifics change and differ by jurisdiction, verify current requirements with FPA Australia directly before you build them into a job ad. This is not an area to work from a two-year-old blog post - including this one.
"Fire technician" is not one job.
It spans sprinkler systems, detection and alarm, passive fire protection, extinguishers and hydrants, fire pumps, and special hazard suppression. These are genuinely different bodies of knowledge.
Picture a shortlist of three for a sprinkler maintenance contract. All three are experienced, properly credentialed fire technicians. All three have spent their careers in detection and alarm. Nobody has done anything wrong - the brief said "fire technician" and that is what arrived.
Name the system type in the job ad. It is the single highest-value thing you can do, and most fire job ads leave it out.
Fire is under-benchmarked and under-understood. Most employers hiring in it are working from a general "trades" salary figure and a job ad that does not name the system type.
An employer who budgets from the actual Brisbane number and writes an ad naming the discipline and the systems is competing against a field that has done neither.
HJ Recruitment places permanent fire, electrical, plumbing, HVAC and refrigeration and solar tradespeople with Australian employers.
Sources- FPA Australia - Fire Protection Accreditation Scheme- SEEK - Fire Technician salary, Brisbane- SEEK - Fire Technician salary, Australia
