If you’re caught up on the recent seasons of the 90 Day Fiance spinoffs, you’re probably familiar with the romance between American Jovi Dufren and Ukranian Yara Zaya. However, you may be wondering: what is Jovi’s job? Yara and Jovi met in Hungary while Jovi was traveling for work and soon fell in love. Yara moved to New Orleans to marry Jovi and they later welcomed their daughter, Mylah. Jovi travels frequently for work and is usually gone for months at a time, which is a big part of the couple’s storyline.
Yara, a fan of the finer things, often jokes about the fact that Jovi makes a lot of money. She stays home to care for Mylah while Jovi travels for work. Still, the show explains little about Jovi’s career, leaving fans wondering: What is Jovi’s job?
What Does Jovi Do For Work?
Jovi works for Schilling UHD as an ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicles) Supervisor. He has been with the company for ten years. Jovi’s interested in underwater robotics began when he worked on shrimp boats in the Louisiana bayous. He told TLC, “I guess just being on a boat is in my blood. So we go down, we do maintenance on pipelines for oil production. I actually love my job; we do a lot of cool stuff, we see all kinds of animals. But my favorite thing about my job is the travel.”
As an ROV supervisor, Jovi operates large robots (think the size of a car) up to 12,000 feet below sea level to perform maintenance on oil pipelines and clean up oil spills. He leads a team that operates all of the underwater repairs. This ROV market size’s expected growth is exceeding $330 million by 2025.
How Much Does Jovi Make?
According to Glassdoor, the national average salary for an ROV supervisor is $98,887. However, there are some salaries listed as high as $178,000. Based on the fact that Jovi has been with the same company for ten years, he likely received merit increases that would put him above the average salary.
Why Does Jovi Travel So Much?
Because operating ROVs requires such specific training, the ROV supervisors get contracts all over the world. Jovi revealed that his job has allowed him to visit over 25 counties. If he hadn’t traveled so much, he would have never met Yara, after all. His contract requires him to work on the boats for 28 days. After that, he can take four weeks off. However, during the pandemic, he spent many months out at sea in 2020.
Yara posted a vlog explaining what she does in a day while Jovi is gone:
If you’d like to read more about what being an ROV supervisor is like, check out this post from an ROV pilot (no, it’s not Jovi 😁).