Where Do Chemical Engineers Work?
Chemical Engineers can do just about anything! The broad training you receive as a chemical engineering student equips you to not only have highly rewarding careers in the chemical industry, but to pursue further education and careers in just about any other field including business management, banking and finance, law, teaching, and medicine, etc. Our graduates have entered just about every profession imaginable. For this reason, chemical engineering is sometimes called the "liberal arts of engineering." The strength and diversity of chemical engineering is in part based on the fact that we don't teach specific chemical industries or applications in the curriculum, but rather illustrate the application of common fundamental principles to various industries via examples.
The Chemical Engineering Industry
The following is a listing of the traditional chemical industry subdisciplines along with examples of some companies employing chemical engineers:
- Fuels and Energy
-
Petroleum (ExxonMobil, Shell)
Natural Gas/Utilities
Hydrogen (Air Products)
Batteries (Duracell)
Fuel Cells (UTC Fuel Cells, PlugPower, Nuvera)
- Commodity Chemicals
-
Agricultural Chemicals
Plastics (GE Plastics)
Rubber (B.F. Goodrich)
- Specialty/Consumer Chemicals
-
Adhesives (3M)
Specialty Chemicals (Kodak)
Paints, Varnishes, Inks
Soaps, Detergents (Proctor & Gamble)
Cosmetics, Perfumes (Clairol) - Advanced Materials
-
Glass (Corning)
Ceramics (Saint Gobain)
Composites
Polymers (WL Gore)
Metals
Catalysts (Englehard)
- Textiles
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Petrochemicals (ICI)
Air Chemicals (Air Products, Praxair)
- Medicine
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Biotechnology (Genzyme)
Biomedical Devices (Abiomed) - Transportation
-
Auto (GM)
Aerospace (United Technologies, GE) - Microelectronics (Intel, IBM, GE)
- Pharmaceutical (Pfizer)
- Process Control (Fisher, Foxboro)
- Process Design (Aspen Plus)
- Food and Beverages (ADM, Coca-Cola, National Starch)
- Pulp and Paper
- Design and construction (Bechtel)
- Environmental, safety, and health
Job Titles
Within the subdisciplines listed above, chemical engineers work as:
The AIChE Web site is a great place to learn about these and the job functions done by chemical engineers.
Other Career Opportunities
In addition to traditional engineering jobs, many chemical engineers work in the following areas:
What's the Degree Worth?
Chemical engineers also make good money, being typically the highest paid engineering profession, as the recent average salary figures show:
| Degree | Average Salary |
|---|---|
| Chemical Engineering | $83,000 |
Economics/Finance | $82,000 |
| Computer Science | $79,000 |
Electrical Engineering Mechanical Engineering | $76,000 |
Math/Statistics | $74,000 |
Management Information Systems | $73,000 |
Business | $72,000 |
Environmental Engineering Chemistry | $71,000 |
Civil Engineering Information Sciences | $68,000 |
Political Science | $67,000 |
Liberal Arts | $66,000 |
Accounting | $62,000 |
Nursing | $60,000 |
History | $57,000 |
Psychology | $52,000 |
English | $45,000 |
Biology | $38,000 |
All info for above table obtained from SimplyHired.com
Info obtained as of May 21,2008 (current)
Employers Recruiting Recent WPI CHE Grads
Last modified: May 22, 2008 08:28:50