What Does a Glass Shop Manager Do?
A chemist's pencil sketch of a vacuum manifold is often the only drawing a glass shop manager gets before quoting the job. The workplace is usually a scientific glassblowing shop at a university or research center, and the manager builds complex pieces, assigns repairs to the other glassblowers and bills each lab for the work.
Glass Shop Manager Duties and Responsibilities
The primary responsibilities of a glass shop manager include:
- Review glassware requests from research labs and agree designs, materials and deadlines with each scientist.
- Estimate labor and material costs, then bill labs at the shop's approved recharge rates.
- Assign repairs and new builds to glassblowers based on skill, urgency and workload.
- Build complex pieces personally, such as vacuum manifolds, condensers and quartz reaction vessels.
- Order borosilicate and quartz tubing, rod and tools, and keep stock levels in check.
- Inspect finished glassware with a polariscope for strain before it leaves the shop.
- Enforce safety rules for torches, oxygen and hydrogen lines, kilns and eye protection.
- Schedule annealing oven loads and keep maintenance records for lathes, saws and kilns.
- Prepare the shop budget and yearly reports on jobs completed and costs recovered.
- Train apprentices and graduate students in safe glass handling and basic repairs.
Required Skills and Qualifications
To succeed as a glass shop manager, you will need the following skills and qualifications:
- Master-level lampworking and glass lathe skills
- Quartz and borosilicate fabrication
- Reading technical drawings and researchers' sketches
- Cost estimating and recharge billing
- Supervising skilled trades staff
- Gas and torch safety
- Patient problem-solving with researchers
- Record keeping for budgets and job logs
Education and Training
To become a glass shop manager, in many universities you will need long experience at the bench as a senior scientific glassblower to qualify to run the shop. You will be both craftsperson and bookkeeper.
Salary and Job Outlook
Typical pay: $58,630 - $91,680 per year, with a median of $74,450.
The range covers the middle half of earners nationwide. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, First-Line Supervisors of Production and Operating Workers.
BLS projects employment of first-line supervisors of production and operating workers, a broad group that includes glass shop managers, to grow about 2 percent from 2025 to 2035. In fact, that group averages roughly 61,000 openings a year, though posts running a scientific glass shop are rare. Jobs like this often are tied to research funding, but managers will be needed as long-serving shop heads retire and as labs keep asking for pieces that cannot be bought off the shelf.
Outlook source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Projections, 2025 to 2035, First-line supervisors of production and operating workers.