Is “underwater welder” actually a job?
Sort of. In Australia there's no separate trade called “underwater welder” that you apply for. The job is commercial diver, or for the construction end of it, construction diver. Underwater welding is one task a commercial diver might do, alongside cutting, rigging, concreting, bolting, inspection and dredging.
There's a lot of hype online about underwater welding, much of it about big-money offshore oil & gas work. The everyday reality here is onshore construction and inspection diving, where you'll cut far more steel than you ever weld, and welding is a tool you reach for occasionally rather than the whole job.
None of that makes it a bad career. It's a genuinely good one, we cover the pay, the demand and the day-to-day on the career path page. It just means the honest way to think about “becoming an underwater welder” is this: become a commercial diver, learn to weld and cut underwater as part of that, and build the welding side up from there.
The two types: wet vs hyperbaric.
Almost everything called “underwater welding” is one of two very different things. They share a name and not much else.
Wet welding
Welding directly in the water, with nothing between the diver and the weld. It uses a waterproofed (flux-coated) electrode, and it's the same arc-welding technique you'd use on the surface, manual metal arc (MMA / stick / SMAW). It's quick and cheap to set up, which is why it's the everyday method for repairs and less-critical work. The catch is quality: the surrounding water quenches the weld almost instantly, leaving it harder, more brittle and prone to porosity and hydrogen cracking. So wet welds are repair-grade, used where speed matters or the job isn't structurally critical. This is the welding the large majority of commercial divers actually do, and the type introduced in ADAS Part 2.
Hyperbaric (dry) welding
A sealed chamber, or “habitat”, is built around the joint and the water is pushed out with gas, so the diver welds in the dry at the surrounding pressure. Take the water away and you can produce code-quality, structural welds, with pre- and post-weld heat treatment, good enough for pipelines and critical repairs. It's slow, expensive and highly skilled, and it's done by experienced offshore saturation divers; operationally it's limited to roughly 400 m depth by what the human body can take. Very few divers specialise in it, and it sits well beyond entry-level training, a step you'd work toward later through an offshore career.
For most work there's no separate welding ticket to chase. Where a job does need certified welds, you may be asked to be coded (formally qualified to a specific welding procedure) for that particular contract, and the company running the work organises and pays for it. It's sorted job by job, not something you line up in advance.
Where welding actually fits in the work.
Underwater construction diving is a toolkit, and welding is one tool in it. On a typical job you're far more likely to be cutting, oxy-arc cutting, or “burning”, to trim piles, remove old tubular supports or cut away damaged plate, than welding. Add rigging and lifting, bolting, concrete work, non-destructive testing (NDT) inspection, dredging and general construction support, and welding is a modest slice of the week.
That's worth knowing before you set your heart on “underwater welding” specifically. It's a useful skill, but it isn't what lifts your pay, your dive qualifications and experience do that. Welding is part of a broader construction-diver skill set, not a career on its own.
Do you need to be a welder first?
This is the biggest myth about the job. Nearly everything you'll read online insists you must be a fully qualified welder before you go anywhere near the water: get your welding ticket first, then learn to dive, then specialise.
In Australia, that's not how it works. Basic wet welding, and underwater cutting, are taught inside the ADAS Part 2 construction-diving course, the same course that qualifies you to work onshore. You don't need a surface welding ticket to start; you learn the fundamentals as part of becoming a commercial diver.
Two honest caveats. First, the welding taught on the course is the foundation, you'll need plenty more practice on real jobs to get genuinely good, the same as any welding. Second, if you already weld well on the surface, that's a real head start, but the diving is the new part, not the welding. It's an advantage, not a prerequisite.
How you actually learn it.
The route is the standard commercial-diving pathway, with welding folded in. You start with the Combined SCUBA and SSBA to 30m (Part 1 & 2) course. Part 2 is the construction half, where wet welding and oxy-arc cutting are introduced alongside the rest of the underwater toolkit.
From there you work as a diver, and your welding and cutting get better with real jobs. In Australia you're diving from the start, not tending on deck for years first the way the US system runs, so you build the skills in the water, on the job. If you later want the high-end structural and hyperbaric welding, that's offshore territory, reached through ADAS Part 3 and Part 4 after years of experience.
So if your goal is to “weld underwater for a living” in Australia, the first concrete step is the same as for any commercial diver: the Combined course. The full career path covers costs, timing and what the job pays.
FAQs.
Not as a starting point, and as a new diver you don't need one. Wet welding and underwater cutting are taught as part of our Combined SCUBA and SSBA to 30m course, in the ADAS Part 2 construction half, which is where the fundamentals belong, because welding underwater only makes sense once you're a competent working diver. Standalone underwater welding courses do exist, but they're aimed at experienced divers wanting to refresh or requalify, not at job seekers or people new to the industry. Get qualified and working first; the welding builds from there.
Learn to weld and cut underwater, the right way.
It begins with the Combined SCUBA and SSBA to 30m (Part 1 & 2) course: eight weeks, the qualification that makes you a working commercial diver, welding and cutting included.