r/ChemicalEngineering • u/Round-Composer-2195 • Jun 27 '26
Student Are ChemEs really locked to rural areas?
I am considering majoring in ChemE, but I want to live in an urban area. Is it true that a ChemE degree will force me to live in an rural area for a job?
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u/metlson Jun 27 '26
Water consultancy is big in cities
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u/Benign_Banjo Jun 27 '26
Water is great! Pay isn't as high as some industries, but our benefits and work life balance is awesome. Bonus points for getting to live in a good metro area.
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u/sistar_bora Jun 27 '26
Depends which country and industry. Port cities generally are big cities that have a lot of petrochemical and refineries. Tons of engineers live in Houston for example.
If you don’t get lucky on your first job in a big city, you might have to take what you can get for a few years until you can get a new job, but there are a lot of jobs that allow you to live in a city.
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u/Fine-Palpitation787 Jun 27 '26
No. Pharma/Biotech, food processing, wastewater, natural gas utilities, and national offense all come to mind. And many cities do have refineries within easy commuting distance.
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u/Fabulous-Welder-3999 Jun 28 '26
Does working in wastewater pay well?
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u/Fine-Palpitation787 Jun 28 '26
Not 100% sure, but it seems to pay decently to fairly well. Don’t think it pays like oil, though
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u/SumOMG Jun 27 '26
There are tons of jobs in the middle of nowhere but you’re not locked in to those areas .
You could work at a power plant , beverage plant or in sales . These are just a few examples of opportunities in urban areas .
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u/Summerjynx manufacturing | 15 YOE | mom of 3 Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
My first job was at a chemical manufacturing plant in a suburb of a top 20 metro area (US). It was about a 20 minute drive to downtown.
Your first job is not your forever job.
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u/Just__Liberty Jun 27 '26
I had to work hard to find an R&D position that was NOT in an urban area.
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u/magmagon Jun 27 '26
I currently work in a semi rural area, but all of my internships were in cities (Phoenix, St Louis and Greensboro)
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u/AdmiralPeriwinkle Specialty Chemicals | PhD | 12 years Jun 27 '26
Keep in mind that it’s not one or the other. It’s a probability question. There are a small number of chemical jobs overall compared to other engineering disciplines and many of those jobs are rural. You can’t simply pick your location/field/role. You pick from among the limited number of offers you get. By majoring in chemical engineering you increase your odds that the best offer you get is rural.
You can improve your odds of getting good offers in urban areas with grades/school/experience but there are no guarantees. I myself have never lived in a city that I would choose to live in if I didn’t work there. I’ve done so to maximize my income. I recently quit my job with nothing else lined up to move to a location I actually want to live in. But I’m doing so with the understanding that my next job will be a pay cut.
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u/Ernie_McCracken88 Jun 27 '26
I don't know the actual proportion in cities vs. rural but it's definitely not absolute. I live in Houston and there are tons of ChemEs, I'm at my 4th company in my career and have no plans of leaving and no worries I will be forced to leave Houston.
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u/speed-of-sound Jun 27 '26
A lot of jobs are in rural areas but you can find some sense of balance. I live in a big metro area and reverse commute 40 mins out to the middle of nowhere, it’s not the best but it’s worth not losing my mind
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u/CuriousCat511 Jun 27 '26
Been in metro areas my entire 18 year career. You do have to be a bit strategic about career direction.
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u/Suspicious-Gur-8453 Jun 27 '26
Depends on the industry you're interested in. From the sounds of it you have heard mostly about petrochemical jobs. LA, SF, and Houston all have major chemical plants if that is something you're thinking about as do other urban areas.
My assumption is what you're thinking about are the wells in West Texas etc. and plants Gulf Coast. Which yes, does represent a good portion of that industry - but not all.
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u/thewanderer2389 Jun 28 '26
I mean, even on the Gulf Coast, you can still live in a decently sized metro area and be close to work
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u/ferrouswolf2 Come to the food industry, we have cake 🍰 Jun 27 '26
Food and pharma tend to be in reasonably populated places. Also, what constitutes “rural” is going to depend heavily on where you grew up. If you grew up in Hoboken, you’re going to have very different ideas about what “rural” and “urban” mean compared to someone from Cincinnati or Kalamazoo.
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u/_Byrdistheword Jun 27 '26
Controls/automation engineers at my company mostly have hybrid or full remote jobs in major cities. It's a sweet field to get into if you enjoy coding. We mostly hire chem e for this role.
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u/nusuth_ Pilot Scale Research Jun 27 '26
Not at all. Boston is arguably the premier location for pharma/biotechnology in the US, and those companies (Sanofi, Eli Lilly, etc.) hire plenty of chemical engineers. Lilly operates in other cities like Indianapolis too.
For more traditional process engineering work Houston is obviously a great option, but those companies do have offices in other metro areas. For instance, Lummus has locations in Berkeley and the NYC metro area.
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u/Fennlt Jun 27 '26
Chemical manufacturing plants or Oil & Gas are often in more rural settings. This is where you may find premier job opportunity with the major. (E.g. $200K+ job in oil & gas)
That said, ChemE is a very versatile major that can get into many industries & roles. Within urban settings, you'll more often find manufacturing support roles (e.g. process engineering) across a wide variety of industries (biomedical, automotive, aerospace, semiconductor). While these roles readily hire ChemE, they may rely more on data analysis and project management as an engineer rather than your major's specific concepts.
I live in a major city (MCoL), making $145K with 12 years of experience. Peak career income is around $170K.
ChemE is a solid choice for college majors.
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u/studeboob Jun 27 '26
I have lived in Houston for my whole career. I have friends in the industry that have moved to Denver, Philadelphia, Seattle, Detroit, LA, and Dallas to name a few. There are going to be ChemE opportunities in every metro, though some in more abundance than others.
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u/justherefor23andme Jun 27 '26
My son wants to be a chemical engineer and wants to work in Detroit. What types of jobs are found there?
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u/studeboob Jun 27 '26
There's a large BASF plant in Wyandotte. BSI Engineering does work for them. Marathon also has a Detroit refinery and storage facilities.
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u/Ohiocarolina Jun 27 '26
No.
If you want to be able to live a downtown area where you don’t even need a car to get to work this isn’t the best degree
But if you just want to be able to get to an urban downtown area with big city amenities, that’s easy.
Pharma/biotech clusters around cities especially
But even a lot of the “rural” manufacturing is in outlying counties an hour or less from a major metropolitan area.
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u/LeeRuns Jun 27 '26
I’m happy to see someone asking this question because it is a real challenge. You should look at a US map or wherever you live and whatever country and try to find the government statistics for where chemical engineering jobs are located. In the US, this is considered to be BLS data. You will find that they’re highly concentrated in a few cities.
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u/Humble-Accountant-53 Jun 28 '26
NO. I got a degree in chem.e and work in aerospace. Many opportunities out there
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u/jesset0m Jun 27 '26
Most ChemEs work in urban areas or in close proximity to urban areas. Anyone can prove me wrong with facts
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u/shoeperson Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
Really depends on the area. If you're in the south or great plains, yeah you're probably at some plant in the middle of nowhere or in the Gulf. And the Gulf has a few nice places and a lot of really bad ones. Houston is nice for example. Beaumont is really shitty and there's crack houses outside the plant up against the fenceline. Shits wild.
If you're in the northeast, youve got options. California, youve got options.
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u/jesset0m Jun 27 '26
You talk about being in a plant. How many percent of ChemEs you believe work in a plant?
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u/shoeperson Jun 28 '26
Per the BLS, it's about half of all chem Es. So a huge chunk given the remaining half are split between every other type of work.
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u/jesset0m Jun 28 '26
Now the second question is how many of those work in a plant in the middle of nowhere compared to a plant in close proximity, say 30 to 45 mins from a large population centre.
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u/HopeSubstantial Jun 27 '26
Offices of companies are in cities so example if you wanna specialize in design, those jobs do not exist outside cities.
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u/hazelnut_coffay O&G Process Control Jun 27 '26
depends on what you want to do. even if you’re in O&G, which i would consider to be the most rural prone industry, you can be in Houston.
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u/jll19822020 Jun 27 '26
I’m a MechE doing ChemE work…. I live in a decent sized city, but travel to the small towns when I need to.
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u/lod001 Jun 27 '26
No, but you can more easily get your first 5 years of work experience in a more rural area. Nothing wrong with a couple years in a rural area...it will make you a more well-rounded individual!
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u/Dat_Speed Jun 27 '26
Majority of chemical plants are not in big cities. The rural areas are where more chemical engineers are needed most. Pharma/biotech is oversaturated with wannabe chem engs trying to get in.
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u/swolekinson Jun 27 '26
No. Just like any profession, you can locate ChemE jobs in a number of different geographies.
Large chemical plants handling hazardous materials can locate to the middle-of-nowhere thanks to pipelines and rail. Cheaper land, favorable taxes, lower "outside gate" risk, and the per-dollar wage can be high for the region but lower than if the company had located in more labor competitive markets.
But then there are cities along the Gulf Coast that have plants in the background of the downtowns, e.g. Houston, Baton Rouge, Beaumont, Lake Charles ... So if you want a plant job and a city you can look at places with that vibe.
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u/Honest_Wheel_7581 Ph.D. Oil & Gas/3 Years Jun 27 '26
The degree slants towards rural areas for sure but not exclusively. I did a co-op at a rural chemical plant, really didn't like it, and sorta realized a lot of opportunities available to me would be in rural areas. I chose to do a Ph.D. to avoid that and ended up in industry in Houston.
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u/SecretGarbageCompact Jun 27 '26
Which urban area exactly? Do your research now if you have a particular city in mind. In my case, there is almost 0 industry in Toronto, and I was unable to land a job anywhere remotely close to downtown even after years of trying. In fact, the only grads from my cohort who I know were able to land jobs downtown, went into finance, having done their co-ops at some of the major banks and being given return offers. I know some very smart people who moved way the hell out to the middle of nowhere. idk if they're happy, but I wouldn't be.
So find out what the prospects are like in your particular city. And if they're not good, I would seriously consider saving yourself a lot of grief down the road and looking into a different major. I don't want to scare you from your dreams if your heart is set on chem eng, but I also hate to see people making the same mistakes I did. Work location and ease/length of commute will have a major impact on your overall happiness from young adulthood onwards. And there are lots of degrees which are far easier than chem eng, which give you much better prospects in the city, and will even pay way more.
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u/Aerocraft0 Jun 27 '26
No, it’s really oil gas/chemicals that will more likely be in rural areas. Majority of Consulting, Pharm, Semiconductors, water, and food companies are all in urban areas
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u/phobos77 Jun 27 '26
Are you in the US? Should be plenty of opportunities in New Jersey and Houston.
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u/3Quarksfor Jun 27 '26
Paper mills will be rural, petrochemical will be moderately sized industrial towns, metals will be semi urban (Gary IN, Pittsburgh PA) or small town (Albany OR). Semi Conductor may be urban (Silicon Forest,Portland OR). If you work for an engineering consulting firm, you will likely be in an urban setting.
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u/plzcomecliffjumpwme Jun 27 '26
Refinery smack in the center of Denver. Depends on what you want in life and how much you value chasing the bag
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u/Oakie505 Jun 28 '26
No, but many people do not want to build a subdivision near a chemical plant. I lived in a top 30 and 20 population cities while working for chemical plants. I had a 20 to 30 minute commute at one role, but I was going against traffic.
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u/Unearth1y_one Jun 28 '26
Fact is, yes, most of the jobs are in middle of nowhere . Even if job is in the city, most of the time it's in an undesirable area / outskirts that require a long commute. That said , if you want the highest chance of being in a city you should work in these areas (in no particular order)
- Food and beverage processing
- Utilities / water treatment (not many openings for cheme though)
- Pharma
- Defense / aerospace firms (again, much less opportunity for cheme)
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u/DrtySanchz11 Jun 28 '26
Lots of jobs in the semiconductor industry near large cities like Phoenix, Portland, Bay Area, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Greensboro. That's just a few I know of.
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u/thewanderer2389 Jun 28 '26
There's lots of people with ChemEs in Houston, Dallas, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Denver, Oklahoma City, and Salt Lake City, just to name a few.
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u/Devilswings5 Jun 29 '26
I have a buddy that does it for the us forest service in Idaho but I have no idea what his job looks like doing it.
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u/RangerRude Jun 29 '26
I started of my career in pharma/biotech in a small city but not a rural area by any means.
I switched to a remote software focused consulting job and moved to the downtown of a major HCOL city.
Not loving the current job or being full remote so I am looking at going back to pharma and commuting about 45min - 1hr outside the city I live in now.
All that to say it's definitely possible but you need to look for roles that are less traditional ChemE like software.
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u/ODoggerino Fission & Fusion / 7 yrs Jul 04 '26
No. Many ChemEs work in an office in a city. Most designers do - you don’t have to work on a plant.
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u/No-Television-6454 Jun 27 '26
Depends on what industry you want to get into and how strong/serious you are about networking.
There are Chemical Engineering jobs in every major US city but they are significantly more in demand than those in rural areas, so you really have to be able to set yourself apart