An audiology assistant is a trained support professional who performs hearing care tasks delegated, directed and supervised by a certified or licensed audiologist: hearing screenings, hearing aid checks and minor repairs, and clinic office work.
Posted under titles including audiology assistant and audiology technician, the role keeps a hearing clinic running while the audiologist handles diagnosis, treatment planning and counseling.
Here is what the job involves, where assistants work, and how to get in.
What is an audiology assistant?
An audiology assistant is a person who, after appropriate training and demonstration of competency, performs delegated tasks that are prescribed, directed and supervised by a certified or licensed audiologist.
That definition is ASHA's, and it frames everything about the job: an assistant does not work independently.
The work sits in the middle of the clinic.
Assistants run hearing screenings, check and clean hearing aids, prepare equipment and rooms, and keep the schedule moving, while the audiologist keeps the diagnosis, the treatment plan and the counseling.
The American Academy of Audiology (AAA) agrees on that core idea.
Its position statement on audiology assistants, approved by the Academy's Board of Directors in March 2021, uses audiology assistant generically to cover titles such as audiology aide and audiologic technician, and limits the term to direct patient-care tasks rather than administrative, financial or clerical roles.
Regulation is the uneven part.
ASHA notes that audiology assistants may or may not be regulated by state law, and that the supervising audiologist is responsible for determining the applicable requirements in their state and work setting.
AAA takes the position that there is no need for state licensing of audiology assistants, arguing they should work only under a state-licensed audiologist.
ASHA, by contrast, operates the voluntary C-AA credential.
ASHA notes that audiology assistants are not specifically listed in the BLS O*NET database, so the role has no dedicated Bureau of Labor Statistics occupation.
Job titles reflect that informality.
In ASHA's 2025 survey of audiology assistants, respondents reported working under titles including Audiology Assistant (42%), Audiology Technician (23%) and, among others, Patient Care Coordinator, Hearing Screening Technician and Office Manager.
What does an audiology assistant do day to day?
ASHA's 2022 Scope of Practice for Audiology Assistants organizes delegable work into four duty areas and 32 tasks.
The exact mix an assistant performs in a given clinic depends on state law, the setting and the competencies the supervising audiologist has documented.
Testing is one of those duty areas.
Within ASHA's scope, assistants may conduct audiologic testing without clinical interpretation: hearing screening, pure-tone air-conduction thresholds, newborn hearing screening, immittance screening and OAE screening.
ASHA's Practice Portal adds hearing and tympanometric screening for older children and adults, again without interpretation.
It also lists electroacoustic analysis of hearing aids, pure-tone reassessment of established patients and assisting with pediatric testing as tasks assistants may take on where state law permits and competence is shown.
Hearing devices are a daily thread.
ASHA's scope lets assistants preset hearing aids using the manufacturer's initial-fit software before a fitting appointment and restore or verify previous device settings, and it includes listening checks, visual inspection of devices, troubleshooting and minor repairs, and minor modifications to earmolds and custom products.
AAA's position statement lists similar examples: equipment maintenance, hearing aid repair, neonatal hearing screening, preparing patients for electrophysiologic and balance testing, hearing conservation and air-conduction testing.
The rest of the day is clinic operations.
ASHA's scope lists clerical work such as stocking, recordkeeping and scheduling, infection control using standard precautions, room and equipment preparation, and helping patients complete case history forms.
What the job actually looks like comes through in ASHA's small 2025 assistant survey (28 audiology assistant respondents).
Cleaning hearing aids was the most frequent daily task at 82% of respondents, 48% reported managerial duties such as scheduling, and 81% said they had never conducted a newborn hearing screening.
The boundaries are as consistent as the tasks.
Under ASHA's scope an assistant should not give interpretive information about a patient's status, write or modify the plan of care, or sign formal documents without the audiologist's co-signature.
ASHA's Practice Portal adds no counseling patients or families about status, no referrals, and no selecting or discharging patients.
Supervision tightens with acuity.
ASHA's scope requires 100% direct audiologist supervision when an assistant works with a medically fragile patient, and the assistant stops performing assigned tasks if the supervising audiologist becomes unavailable until a new supervising audiologist is designated.
The task list is set by state law and the supervising audiologist
Audiology assistant vs audiology technician: same job, different titles
Audiology assistant and audiology technician describe the same supervised support job wearing different name tags.
What differs is who uses which word, not the work behind it.
ASHA and the Academy of Doctors of Audiology use audiology assistant.
AAA began using audiology technician for an assistant membership category in 2016, and its position statement treats aide and audiologic technician titles as part of the same generic group.
Job titles in ASHA's 2025 survey used both conventions: 42% of respondents reported the title Audiology Assistant and 23% Audiology Technician, alongside others such as Patient Care Coordinator, Hearing Screening Technician and Office Manager.
The VA posts audiology support jobs under a third label, Health Technician (Audiology), in OPM's GS-0640 Health Aid and Technician series, the series covering support duties to health personnel including audiologists.
ASHA also describes Teleaudiology Clinical Technicians, staff who give patient and equipment interface support for a remote ASHA-certified, licensed audiologist, and notes they are currently used only in the VA health care system.
When you compare postings, read the duty list rather than the title.
Both name tags describe the model ASHA and AAA set out: delegated tasks under an audiologist's supervision.
The words on the name badge are the variable.
Where do audiology assistants work?
Assistants work under audiologist supervision in a range of settings.
ASHA's scope lists schools, long-term care and skilled nursing facilities, clinics, home health and telepractice or rural outreach as settings where audiology assistants may work under an audiologist's supervision.
ASHA's how-to-become material adds private practice, VA facilities and military bases, as state law allows.
In ASHA's small 2025 survey, private practice was the most common primary employer of assistant respondents (11 of 25, or 44%), followed by hospitals and nonresidential health care settings such as ENT offices at 20% each.
That is what 25 survey respondents reported, not a market census.
The surveyed work was on site: 81% of assistant respondents worked full-time (35 or more hours a week), and all of them worked in person, none remote.
For the broader numbers on the hearing care workforce, including employment and wages for audiologists and hearing aid specialists, see our hearing care workforce statistics.
How do you become an audiology assistant?
There is no single national doorway into the job.
ASHA's Practice Portal states that most audiology assistants are trained on-site by their supervising audiologist or employer rather than in formal programs.
ASHA's career-pathway material lists on-the-job training, military training and training as hearing conservationists among the ways assistants start, noting that formal training options are fewer than they are for speech-language pathology assistants.
AAA's position is that the minimum education for an audiology assistant should be a high school diploma or equivalent plus formal training or competency-based training in the facility.
The formal programs that do exist carry a caveat: ASHA lists training programs for audiology assistants only as self-identified and not reviewed or endorsed by ASHA; Oklahoma State University's audiology assistant certificate is one listed example.
A communication sciences and disorders (CSD) degree opens a second door.
ASHA notes that someone with an undergraduate CSD degree can often work as an audiology assistant or speech-language pathology assistant while waiting for graduate school admission.
Do you need certification or a state registration?
Two different things get confused here: a national credential and a state rule.
ASHA's credential is the C-AA, the Certified Audiology Assistant designation established under its 2020 standards for audiology assistants certification.
The C-AA is voluntary.
ASHA states that it is a national, voluntary credential, not interchangeable with state licensing laws, and that it does not automatically qualify the holder for state licensure or registration.
Whether you need a state credential at all depends on the state.
ASHA notes that audiology assistants may or may not be regulated by state law, with the supervising audiologist responsible for determining the applicable requirements in their state and work setting.
The professional bodies split on the policy question.
AAA does not see a need for state licensing of audiology assistants, arguing they should work only under a state-licensed audiologist.
It opposed an Illinois bill (HB 3102) that would have created an audiology assistant license and accepted ASHA assistant certification as a pathway, calling registration a less burdensome alternative.
Our research did not verify what happened to that bill.
Verify before you apply or hire
What does an audiology assistant earn?
BLS has no dedicated occupation for audiology assistants, as ASHA notes the role is not specifically listed in the BLS O*NET database, so there is no dedicated BLS wage series for the job.
The clearest published data point is ASHA's own 2025 Audiology Assistant Survey, and it is small: 356 people responded (a 9.2% response rate), only 28 of them audiology assistants, and ASHA itself warns that the percentages may not be representative.
Hourly respondents (17) reported a median rate of $20.67 an hour, with a range of $14.50 to $34.00.
Salaried respondents (six) reported a median of $50,000 a year.
Treat those as a snapshot of a small survey, not market pay.
Find audiology assistant jobs
HearingHires lists hearing care openings as employers post them.
Browse audiology assistant jobs to see what is live today, and check back as new postings land.
When you scan postings, expect the title variations from earlier: audiology assistant, audiology technician, and in VA postings, Health Technician (Audiology).
Match your application language to the posting's duty list, because the duty list tells you what the job actually covers.
Hiring for a clinic instead?
You can post an audiology assistant job through our hearing care hiring hub.
Career information, not medical, legal or licensing advice. Rules for audiology assistants come from state law and from ASHA's certification standards; confirm current requirements with your state licensing board or the body named above.