CEChemical Engineer
CE
Career

Chemical Engineer

By the numbers
Typical pay
$125,040 / yr
Education to start
Bachelor's degree
Future demand
+2.6% by 2034
People in this job
21K
Figures shown for ·closest of 2 O*NET occupations
The work
A day, hour by hour
07:00
Plant walkthrough

Walk the production floor — check gauges, temps, and anything overnight flagged.

07:30
Morning standup

Sync with operators and shift lead. Surface any alarms or yield dips from the night.

08:00
Process simulation

Run Aspen models to stress-test a scale-up tweak before it touches real equipment.

10:00
Troubleshoot reactor

Reactor pressure spiked at 09:40 — dig into data, decide: adjust now or shut it down.

11:00
Hazard review

Walk through HAZOP checklist for a new process before it goes live next week.

13:00
Yield & compliance check

Compare today's output data against targets and emissions limits — flag anything off.

14:30
Process optimization

Tweak temperature and flow rate settings to squeeze better yield without breaking downstream.

15:30
Technical write-up

Document today's reactor incident, data, and fix — formal record for safety and QA files.

16:30
Shift handoff

Brief the incoming engineer on open issues, the reactor fix, and what to watch overnight.

Things you do
  • Design chemical processes that turn raw materials into real products.
  • Run simulations to predict how a process will behave at scale.
  • Scale a lab experiment up to a full industrial production line.
  • Troubleshoot a reactor or pipeline when something goes wrong on the floor.
  • Check that emissions, waste, and chemicals meet safety and environmental rules.
Decisions you’ll make
  • Is this process safe enough to run, or do I shut it down?
  • Will this lab result actually hold up when we scale to full production?
  • Should I tweak the process now to fix this, or will that create a bigger problem downstream?
  • Is this yield drop a real issue, or just normal variation I can ignore?
  • Do we meet environmental limits here, or do I need to flag this before we go further?
Education Pathways · how you get there
100 in 100 went the college route · 0 in 100 found another way in None, typically
Education mapped from O*NET:
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