r/ChemicalEngineering • u/MistakeSea6886 • Sep 21 '23

Salary What’s the most profitable career path?

I’m a freshmen Engineering major that is taking gen Ed’s. I am thinking of switching to chemical engineering next year. I really like ChE but but want to pick a profitable career path, which is why I’m on the fence between it and Computer science. I did research and found that petroleum engineering is very profitable, and ChE can pick it pretty quickly. However with the way the world is going(more green energy), are renewable energy jobs such as nuclear power plants going to experience a boom in demand and become more profitable?

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '23

NUCLEAR, many entry level jobs pay ++100k

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u/MistakeSea6886 Sep 22 '23

But do they get a high pay raise. I know I’m CSE senior programmers make a lot more money than those at entry because they are in much higher demand. Apparently the industry is over saturated with programmers at entry level so they are having difficult finding jobs, while experienced and senior programmers are getting 200k+ offers

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u/[deleted] Sep 27 '23

Of course, there are tons of career progression paths in every energy sector.

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u/MistakeSea6886 Sep 27 '23

Is working in nuclear energy really that different than working in other power plants or oil and gas?

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u/[deleted] Sep 29 '23

Cant speak for myself, as I have not worked in O&G, however, a lot of my coworkers in operations are from oil fields and they say its pretty similar as far as lockout/tagout process and responding to transients. They also say nuclear ops is waaay safer and we have much more training.

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u/MistakeSea6886 Sep 29 '23

But I imagine nuclear pays much less.

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u/[deleted] Sep 30 '23

I wouldn't say much less, it all depends on location. In my area, nuclear engineers get paid more.

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u/MistakeSea6886 Sep 30 '23

Do you know if they are reactor engineers, or just ChE and ME that work there? From my understanding a nuclear plant doesn’t have that many actual nuclear engineers.

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u/[deleted] Oct 03 '23

There are chemical, reactor, systems, fire protection, mechanical, electrical, civil, environmental engineers and many many more. Basically any engineering job you can imagine exists at a nuke plant.