Average hours for salary in the us is 45. Our requirement is 45.
We currently hired for this position, but are always taking resumes. There is a lot of turnover in programming positions. The guys get an offer or decide to move, or decide to lateral into tool sales, because they never liked manufacturing or whatever. The guys seem industry trained to say they like challenges but ultimately the stress and challenges cause a lot of guys to bail out. Some of the guys are working two full time professional level jobs and a side training gig weekends and accelerate their own burnout. There is a strong deficit of skilled and trained true offline programmers today, and many of the guys have no formal post secondary education, so they lack key attributes like communication skills, teamwork, and dedication and commitment to goals. Many of the programmer candidates are actually job shop programming machinists who do 80% machine operating and 20% programming.
Currently in Wisconsin median pay for offline programmers is like 68k in my opinion / understanding of what I've seen and indeed information. If you google "median pay for cnc programmer wisconsin", the answer is "$51,684 an year" comming from zip recruiter information. I think top jobs in Wisconsin are around $115K, and nationally are around 145k, but are at rare places like Boeing or Lockheed (not in this state, and tremendously skilled/ with tremendous liability and stress for errors). In aerospace if a programmer's part fails and its traceable to his or her error, people are likely to die, and the programmer may do prison time, so it's probably even worse than medical liability.
We pay about 95th or better percentile in the state for similar work hours. I know a guy who was recently making turbine blades for hydro-electric power generation and he was making ~$44/hr working 60-80 hrs making ~125k but it took a tremendous toll physically and he works for a large international cutting tool company in a sales capacity now. We tried to hire him away from that, and he entertained that for a while, but he obviously is scarred from 60-80 hours supporting power, and doesn't want to program for a living anymore. This job is one of the best opportunities in cnc programming in Wisconsin, and it is worth dropping a resume, or interviewing for long term consideration to vacate a position in the event this job becomes available again. I understand you're retired, but that is the kind of position this position is, for a candidate interested in a more balanced work / life situation, or who is interested in firearms, and highly skilled in Mastercam programming.