Chemical Engineer
Also known as: Process Engineer, ChemE, Chemical Process Engineer
Design and optimize industrial processes for manufacturing chemicals, fuels, pharmaceuticals, and food products at scale.
Salary Range
The highest-paid specialization or seniority level for chemical engineers.
About 1 in 200 reaches this level
About 21,900 chemical engineers (BLS Employment Projections, SOC 17-2041, 2025); only ~108 reach VP Process Engineering at major petroleum/pharma companies at ~$310K total comp, about 0.5% of the field.
Salary data based on 2025 BLS, Glassdoor, and industry reports. Actual compensation varies by location, experience, and employer.
How to Become One
This career typically requires a bachelor's degree. Here are the top colleges for it:
Cost to Qualify
Four years of tuition and required fees runs about $56K at a typical public college in our list (in-state) and about $288K at a typical private one. Both are pricier than the US national averages (about $48K public in-state, $180K private nonprofit, College Board 2025-26) because our 161-college dataset only includes nationally-ranked schools, not every US college. This excludes room and board, which we show separately on each college's page.
Sticker price, not what most people pay — scholarships, aid and in-state status all move it. Room and board is shown separately on each college's page.
AI Risk Assessment
Chemical engineers design the processes and plants that make fuels, medicines, food and materials. AI tools can help with parts of the computer-based work, but there is little sign so far that they are doing much of the job. Anthropic's March 2026 study, which tracks how much of each job's tasks people already use its Claude AI for at work, found no measurable use for chemical engineers. Microsoft's 2025 study of Copilot conversations puts the job in the middle of the pack (311th of 785 jobs) for how well AI fits its tasks.
The government's outlook is positive. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects chemical engineering jobs to grow 5% from 2025 to 2035, faster than the 3% average, driven by demand for the products these engineers help make and by changing environmental rules. It is a small field, though: about 21,900 jobs and 1,100 openings a year, so entry is competitive for reasons that have nothing to do with AI. In its February 2025 study of AI and its projections, BLS said engineering jobs may see some productivity gains from AI, but in line with past software advances, and are not expected to see large AI-driven job cuts.
We lower this from 3 to 2 (Low). The old score said the junior analysis work was being automated and the entry path was narrowing, but no source we could find shows that for chemical engineering. What we found is modest measured AI use and faster-than-average growth, which is what 2 means: AI helps, and demand absorbs the gains. It sits one step below civil engineering, where the profession's own magazine is forecasting fewer junior roles.
What would change the score: evidence that chemical, energy or pharmaceutical firms are hiring fewer graduate engineers because of AI process-design or simulation tools, or a BLS projection that cuts growth because of AI, would move this back to 3.
Sources
Ratings reflect a 10-year outlook based on 2025-2026 research, weighted toward entry-level impact. Individual outcomes will vary.
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