PEProcess Engineering
PE
Career

Process Engineering

By the numbers
Typical pay
$102,440 / yr
Education to start
Bachelor's degree
Future demand
+11.0% by 2034
People in this job
366K
Figures shown for ·closest of 3 O*NET occupations
The work
A day, hour by hour
06:45
Floor walk

Walk the line before full shift; catch overnight anomalies firsthand.

07:15
Data pull & triage

Scan overnight production data — flag defect spikes and yield dips.

07:45
Shift standup

Sync with operators and supervisors; decide what needs action today.

08:15
Deviation call

One process ran 12% slow — normal variation or real problem? Dig in.

09:30
Process experiment

Run a controlled trial on the redesigned mixing step; log every variable.

11:30
SOP update

Rewrite the procedure operators follow after last week's near-miss.

13:00
Root-cause session

Whiteboard the defect pattern with quality and maintenance; find the culprit.

14:30
Results presentation

Show managers the efficiency gains — charts, hard numbers, next steps.

15:30
Safety audit

Check guarding and chemical controls on the new line before sign-off.

Things you do
  • Redesign a production step to cut waste, time, or cost.
  • Hunt down the root cause when a process suddenly goes wrong.
  • Walk the factory floor and watch how products actually get made.
  • Run experiments to test whether a process change actually works.
  • Analyze production data to spot patterns, defects, or slowdowns.
Decisions you’ll make
  • Is this process deviation a real problem, or just normal variation?
  • Should I halt the line now, or try to fix this while we keep running?
  • Is the efficiency gain here worth the safety trade-off?
  • Do I have enough data to act, or am I jumping to conclusions?
  • Should I redesign this process from scratch, or just patch what's broken?
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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