r/ChemicalEngineering • u/PreparationSmall8048 • Feb 28 '25

Salary EPC Salaries

Hi, I’ve been working at my licensing EPC firm for 3 yrs now. I’m not sure if I want to stay in this industry, my company doesn’t have many growth opportunities unless you have 7-8 YOE and the only route seems to be the technical SME route or maybe PM, with a salary cap at about 180k and that’s with 20-30 YOE. My personal goal would to reach that range sooner. I like what I do, but I think I would like to eventually move away from a dense technical role and being PM or going into leadership, but I feel like that would only be attainable around 6-7YOE.

Curious, if you have experience working at an EPC what has your salary progression been with your YOE. Do you anticipate to stay in this industry? Have you found a better role that works you?

I was hired after getting my Master’s degree, so technically putting me at 4 YOE. I started at 94k and am now at 110k with no bonuses offered. Located in Midwest.

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u/Ritterbruder2 Feb 28 '25

In my opinion, EPC is not a good place to build your career early on. You’ll be trained up to do grunt work. The good thing about EPC is that there are many roles and opportunities. Get your experience elsewhere, then join EPC as an SME like you mentioned.

165 at 10 YOE.

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u/PreparationSmall8048 Feb 28 '25

It’s a bit late for me as I’ve already started out in EPC lol. Overall, I’d say it’s been a pretty good experience as it’s given me a lot of exposure to the licensing and epc side. But I don’t necessarily like we as the engineers lead the entire project through completion (obviously with delegating other SMEs and groups) but get paid so little. It sure does feel like grunt work especially for how much they are actually charging our clients on the rate sheet for our work. What kind of industry would you recommend I explore before (possibly) returning to EPC work?

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u/clgzero1 Feb 28 '25

Nothing wrong with starting EPC. My experience is that it makes you keep your chemical engineering fundamentals. You will always use that skill set if you stay in engineering. For operators you tend to become less sharp since you are dealing with making $ rather than pure engineering. Remember operations makes money regardless of what product they make. If operators could make money selling balloons, they would sell balloons.