A Smith Welcome to the forum.

Your prolly going to do best at material test facility working as an apprentice or helper of some sort to the regular inspectors in a very large operation, if you insist on trying to market yourself as a CAWI.

A CAWI really cannot do anything of merit unsupervised.....
Frankly you might do better keeping whatever current position you have and putting more effort into getting a passing score on your CWI exam.

Don't expect to make more than about 12 bucks an hour if your strictly applying for a job as a CAWI. Plenty of top shelf welders don't pass the CWI exam the first time out, but their market value is in their welding skills rather than in the CAWI.

A CAWI either lacks the experience required to be a CWI or the ability to pass the CWI Exam. So you will not be able to leverage high wages as an inspector.