Chemical Engineers

High pay & lowrisk Trending
Minimal Risk
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Occupation snapshot

What does this snowflake show?
The Snowflake is a visual summary of the five badges: Automation Risk (calculated), Risk (polled), Growth, Wages and Volume. It gives you an instant snapshot of an occupations profile. The colour of the Snowflake relates to its size. The better the occupation scores in relation to others, the larger and greener the Snowflake becomes.
JOB SCORE
7.0/10
What's this?
Job Score (higher is better):

We rate jobs using four factors. These are:

- Chance of being automated
- Job growth
- Wages
- Volume of available positions

These are some key things to think about when job hunting.

Risk & user votes

Calculated automation risk

19% (Minimal Risk)

Minimal Risk (0-20%): This occupation appears difficult to replace end-to-end with current or near-future automation, including AI software and robotics. Roles in this range usually depend on human judgement, creativity, care, leadership, specialist expertise, or adapting to messy real-world situations. AI and machines may still change parts of the work, but the occupation is likely to remain a distinct human role.

More information on what this score is, and how it is calculated is available here.

Human strengths important in this job

These are human abilities and work contexts that are important in this occupation. They may help explain why parts of the role are harder to replace end-to-end, but they are not the only inputs into the automation score.

Decision-making and problem solving

Very important
Why this matters
Analyze information, weigh tradeoffs, and choose the best solution—especially when situations are ambiguous, high-stakes, or have real-world consequences.
Jobs that also use this strength

Thinking creatively

Quite important
Why this matters
Coming up with original ideas and designs—creating new concepts, products, systems, or artistic work. This kind of open-ended invention and taste-based judgment is harder to automate end-to-end than routine, rule-based tasks.
Jobs that also use this strength

Social perceptiveness

Quite important
Why this matters
Noticing others’ emotions and reactions in the moment and adjusting what you say or do based on why they’re responding that way.
Jobs that also use this strength

Coaching and developing others

Quite important
Why this matters
Helps people learn and improve through coaching, mentoring, and feedback. This relies on trust, motivation, and adapting guidance to each person—work that’s hard to replace end-to-end with automation.
Jobs that also use this strength

Coordinating others’ work

Quite important
Why this matters
Bringing people together, assigning tasks, and keeping a group aligned so work gets done.
Jobs that also use this strength
Show 3 more strengths

Consulting and advising others

Quite important
Why this matters
Provide guidance and expert advice to managers or teams on technical, system, or process decisions—explaining options, tradeoffs, and recommended actions.
Jobs that also use this strength

Active learning

Quite important
Why this matters
Keeps learning from new information and applying it to make better decisions now and in the future, especially when situations change.
Jobs that also use this strength

Operations analysis

Quite important
Why this matters
Figure out what people need and what a product must do, then translate those requirements into a workable design.
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What users think

Based on 838 votes

31% chance of full automation within the next two decades

Our visitors have voted there's a low chance this occupation will be automated. This assessment is further supported by the calculated automation risk level, which estimates 19% chance of automation.

What do you think the risk of automation is?

What is the likelihood that Chemical Engineers will be replaced by robots or artificial intelligence within the next 20 years?

Sentiment

Based on user votes over time

View sentiment trend

How opinions have changed over time

Pay & outlook

Wages

Very high paid relative to other professions

In 2024, the median annual wage for Chemical Engineers was $121,860 ($59 per hour).

The median annual wage for Chemical Engineers was 146.2% higher than the national median annual wage, which stood at $49,500.

View wage trend

Wages over time

* Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics

Growth

Moderate growth relative to other professions

The number of 'Chemical Engineers' job openings is expected to rise 2.6% by 2034

View employment trend

Total employment, and estimated job openings

* Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the period between 2023 and 2033
Updated projections are due 09-2025.

Volume

Lower range of job opportunities compared to other professions

As of 2024 there were 20,330 people employed as 'Chemical Engineers' within the United States.

This represents around < 0.001% of the employed workforce across the country

Put another way, around 1 in 7 thousand people are employed as 'Chemical Engineers'.

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What people are saying (13)

Leave a comment
Anonymous (No chance)
18 Aug 2025 04:32
Chemical engineering not only requires human thinking but i also think that since ai sometimes makes mistakes in things as simple as facts or calculations, it might cause an error during the design process which ends up as a faulty product if the entire design and testing process has been automated. Because of this I think that it is impossible.
Caroline (Highly likely)
23 Mar 2026 11:51
Chemical Engineering requires precise measurements of chemicals and knowing what kind of chemicals will interact in a different way that will help. This means humans must be as smart as robots, and Chemical Engineering can be a liability to companies.
Dan (Low)
15 Sep 2025 11:52
High degree of collaboration between job descriptions and departments, client facing roles especially difficult to automate / replace.
Anant (Low)
23 Jul 2025 09:10
Too much manual labour involved
Manual interventions required
Melissa (No chance)
04 Dec 2024 15:28
too hard to do and doesnt involve manual repeating tasks(i think)
Jeremy Ibuprofen
05 May 2021 02:25
CE is not to be taken over by robots as Shreyash Gadakh says it needs a human brain and an imaginative mind.
Malcom
28 Oct 2023 22:56
If a ChemE is skilled at concept-intitiation and development, he/she/they will be able to work together with AI, but I could see this job seeing cuts in the future once more productivity is leveraged through AI.
Michi (No chance)
25 Nov 2019 14:19
CE work requires creative ideas, problem solving mindset and out of the box thinking.
Kevin hsueh
01 Dec 2020 05:33
I agree with you. Robots don’t have Brain to solve humanity problem. If the robot really takes our jobs . I think our human in earth whose intelligence will decrease because we don’t use our brain .
Elbarqy
27 Mar 2025 02:42
the same goes for computer programming, we just have enough data on the matter that's why it's very risky atm, when the attention shift to you, your job would be at risk, and software engineers would be the one automating this job.
JK (Low)
19 Apr 2024 12:37
Being in the second year of Chemical Engineering, I feel certain factors of process development would require the assistance of AI, but not a complete takeover, as these machines cannot account in for human errors and other intricacies of designing plants
CTB (Moderate)
29 Jun 2023 20:43
Regardless of the difficulties that can be found in everyday problems, tasks like plant design can be fully automated based on location, requirements, and technologies to be applied. As well, many tasks for a plant can be partially automated, like auxiliary services, fire prevention, and update related documents.
Adrian Quesada Paredes (Moderate)
07 Jun 2024 10:35
Because over the years, it has been seen that technology is superior.
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Job description

Design chemical plant equipment and devise processes for manufacturing chemicals and products, such as gasoline, synthetic rubber, plastics, detergents, cement, paper, and pulp, by applying principles and technology of chemistry, physics, and engineering.

O*NET-SOC code: 17-2041.00