What are the best places for Chemical Engineers to work at?
I think the best Chem E jobs are in the medical fields, because of safety, challenge, decent pay, flexibility, and opportunity. The jobs in the oil companies and chemical companies pay better, but there is always the you might get killed kind of a deal if the plant blows up. Or course, most make it just fine, but I have seen data that shows the death rates on the job are higher for Chem E's than other engineers. I think one of the characteristics any best job has is that you go home in the same condition you went to work in. As far as getting the rock star treatment, I can't help you with that. If you can find a job where they let you play basketball and give you three meals a day, outstanding. Do they make you work also, or just pay you to eat and ball?
For Chemical Engineering graduates there are many good opportunities. You can join any below listed company as per your field of interest:Oil & gas:Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil, BP, Total, Chevron ONGC, HPCL, BPCL, Reliance Petroleum Ltd., Indian Oil Corporation, GAILChemical processing:BASF, DowDuPont Inc. (merging of Dow Chemical & Du Pont)Tata Chemicals, Gujarat Fluorochemicals Ltd., Aarti IndustriesAgriculture:GNFC, Coromandel International, UPL, Chambal Fertilisers, Rashtriya Chemicals, Zuari Agro Chemicals, GSFC, NFL, Rallis India, PotashCorp, Yara International, Bayer Crop SciencePharmaceuticalPfizer, Roche, GlaxoSmithKline, Cipla, Lupin, GlenmarkEngineering services & consulting:,Schlumberger, Linde Engineering, Halliburton, Baker Hughes, Engineers India Ltd., Tata Consulting Engineers Ltd., Larsen & Toubro Hydrocarbon EngineeringChemical engineering softwareAspen Technology, HoneywellAutomotiveToyota, General Motors, Tata Motors, Mahindra & MahindraTextileBombay Dyeing, Grasim Industries, Century Textiles and Industries Ltd.FoodNestle, PepsiCo, Amul, Brittania IndustriesConsumer productsProcter & Gamble, Unilever, Godrej Consumer Products Ltd., Asian Paints, Pidilite IndustriesNuclear energy: Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd., Bhabha Atomic Research CentreIf you want to go for MTech you can do it from: Indian Institute of Technology, National Institute of Technology , Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Lovely Professional University, Jalandhar , Birla Institute of Technology and Science, College of Engineering Pune , Anna University, Chenna,i Delhi Technological University, Delhi , Ramaiah Institute of Technology, Bangalore, VIT Vellore, Jadavpur University, Christ University , IIIT Allahabad, BMS college Bangaluru
1. TexasAnnual median wage: $113,620Cost of living: 90.7Employment: 6,9102. IndianaAnnual median wage: $104,760Cost of living: 87.9Employment: 7003. LouisianaAnnual median wage: $108,740Cost of living: 94.4Employment: 2,3304. KansasAnnual median wage: $106,410Cost of living: 90.4Employment: 210Source : 25 Best States For Chemical Engineers
I think research is something you need to get into to pursue chemical engineering. Engineering means predicting the outcome with minimum error. Say in electrical and communication engineering, this error is <0.000001%, thats is why when we call someone, it almost every time connects to the correct person. But this error is much more in chemical engineering and there are no specific formulae or technology to predict the outcome very accurately.So, after 2–3 years, most engineering jobs get reduced to merely operations jobs. So, if you are seeking a good learning curve and intellectual satisfaction, you need to either get into pharma consulting or research jobs, which allows you to explore much.
According to me, In India the best chemical engineering company to work for is Shell. They give good pay, and benefits. The work life balance, working culture and people are awesome. You will also have a very good learning experience and lot of growth opportunities.If you want good package and prefer diverse profile then fmcg companies are the best option. They change your position time to time and in this you won't get bored. For example if you start as a process engineer you can end up as a marketing manager 5 years down the line. They also pay a lot and have the best growth opportunities for a chemical engineer.
There are many job opportunities abroad for chemical engineers (Specifically for process design engineers). I myself have worked in few countries apart from India, so may be my answer would help.Let us go through one by one, the order is based on my personal favourite places to work. This places have very good and reputed engineering companies for chemical engineers.1. Aberdeen, Scotland2. Netherlands3. Japan (I have worked here)4. South Korea (I have worked here)5. Singapore6. Malaysia7. Sharjah, UAE (I have worked here)8. Oman (I have worked here)There are certainly other countries which may be better, but I have tried to list the countries which either, I have personally worked in or I know that scope of landing with a job opportunity is high for a process design engineer.Regards,Manoj Dube
Best Grad School for Chemical Engineering?
If you think you can handle more school, I'd probably go for it. But perhaps I'm biased. . . that's where I've been since I finished *my* BS in ChE. Of course, I'd also suggest you could at least consider fields other than just ChE when looking at programs, too, because some of those use a *lot* of ChE concepts if you get the right type of research project. . . but that's my bias talking again. :) Definitely look at the research options available to you and the types of people you'd be working with -- a good school is nice, but if the research isn't all that interesting to you or your advisor really sucks, you'll hate it. People overlook this all the time thinking that they can put up with anything and that silly stuff like that can't matter, but I've seen people thrive or drop out because of said "silly stuff". It's a quite different ballgame than a BS is. One thing to look out for in terms of research is that there seems to be two different directions with ChE -- some is branching out into other related fields like environmental, medical, etc. applications (the half I personally like), and some is studying the intricacies of well-developed ideas. Anything that's a lot like what you study as an undergrad in terms of general relevance has probably been worked out for decades. I'm not saying that you need to know what you want going in to a grad degree (I never seem to!), but you need to keep in mind what you at least don't want when you're visiting with people at any schools you're interested in. Oh, and take the FE even if your program doesn't require it. Whether you plan to be somewhere you'll need a PE or not, it's still good to do now while you remember everything just in case. Yes, I know it's not a big deal if you're going to end up in a plant -- I'd still do it. The GRE: zzzzz. I studied maybe an hour (yikes, how *does* one do grade-school math by hand?) and did well on it -- really not at all the right type of test for engineering. Engineering grad schools realize this isn't a good test, too. MBAs: eh, that's not real grad school. You may want one of those eventually if you're looking at an industry job, but a lot of employers seem to pay for them.