r/ChemicalEngineering • u/aybanbert01 • 1d ago
Career Advice If you were starting ChemE today (with AI + emerging tech everywhere), what would you do differently to future-proof your career?
Looking for insights from current students and professionals. With AI, new tech, and sustainability reshaping industries, what skills, tools, or focus areas would you prioritize if you were starting chemical engineering now? What do you wish you had focused on earlier to stay relevant?
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u/ddrro997 1d ago
Chemical Engineering and automation can exist in tandem, automation isn’t a threat to your future. Absolutely learn Python, it will make your life so much easier. Once you graduate you can always obtain additional certifications if you want to pivot in a different direction.
THE most important skill to learn if you don’t have it already is people skills. I’ve seen the smartest most capable engineers lose opportunities and promotions because they don’t socialize/network or don’t know how to express themselves properly.
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u/crosshairy 1d ago
Public speaking, oral presentation skills, general grammar/writing techniques.
Learning/practicing how to interact with normal humans and make them generally like you. Making small talk, being funny, and likable.
Explaining complex topics in a simple way such that no one gets offended while also learning the important parts in the process.
Organizational skills. Task management and prioritization. How to be a “working manager” so that you can be the last person standing even in a bad job market.
Technical engineering skills are valuable, but many folks that excel there are terrible at those preceding items.
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u/sl0w4zn 1d ago
Wish I studied harder in thermo. It's very versatile and used in a lot of my work. More code knowledge and interpretation would be useful. There's so much based senior engineers passing that knowledge on, and wish I had a stronger foundation on certain codes.
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u/aybanbert01 1d ago
That makes a lot of sense. I keep hearing thermo is one of those subjects you don’t appreciate fully until you’re actually using it in the field. I’ll make sure to put extra focus there (currently taking it this semester)!
On the codes, do you mean programming or more like industry codes/standards?
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u/sl0w4zn 1d ago
Industry codes and standards. It's hard as a student what you need to know. You need to have a feel of what industry you're going into and what discipline you want to become more focused on. I'm in a heavy-mechanical group, so codes like ASME B31.3 is brought up often. NFPA codes if you get involved with buildings and fire protection. There's so much out there lol...
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u/Hot-Analyst6168 4h ago
Work to fully understand and how to apply Transport Phenomena. Those who did in my company were the technical movers and shakers and at the top echelon of our engineering staff.
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u/r2o_abile 1d ago
100% go into controls. Very important, in need, can port to other industries, not just chemical industries.
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u/babyd42 1d ago
Controls is never going away either. A simple air gapped process is so much more robust and unlikely to fail than something tied to the Internet. I just wish more things stayed simple in automation rather than needing to connect a simple I/O process to an Ethernet based communication network
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u/Anon-Knee-Moose 1d ago
The monkey paw has granted your wish and you're now stuck working with nothing but pneumatics
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u/KingSamosa Energy Consulting | Ex Big Pharma | MSc + BEng 23h ago
In any industry which needs qualified equipment these smart devices are a pain in the backside
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u/friskerson 18h ago
Related, broader, Operational Technology. You may not get deep into the weeds with it but It’s the blanket term for SCADA, DCS, PLCs, VFDs, motors, pneumatics, motors, and more. Controls engineers work under this umbrella. There’s a dotted line link between Information Technology (IT) infrastructure (ERP, databases, networking) and OT. Some companies air gap and others connect together seamlessly and securely since it shouldn’t be too scary to do… except for the ones who use admin/password for the login and are visible to the open internet, or have easy to guess passwords (address, phone number, etc). Bad combo.
I recently went to an OT conference so I’m now more aware of this area.
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u/Aromatic-Beach-4198 1d ago
All things considered, I’m in a pretty good spot.
Things I’m glad I did:
Focus on gaining industry experience as a student. To do that, I made sure to get a baseline of good grades, and I gunned hard for extracurricular activities. I also went to career fairs
Networking. All 3 internships and my current gig are through referrals. And I got a transfer by asking someone I knew at the company.
Willingness to relocate. 3 internships? 3 relocations. First job out of school? Relocation. Internal transfer which saved me from a layoff? Cross-country move (to somewhere that I actually liked a lot better that I would never have considered).
Things I would’ve done differently/done better:
Not a big deal now, but as a student/fresh grad, it’s best to say “I’ve learned a lot and am eager for more” when applying to that second internship. Not “I’m experienced” because one internship isn’t much experience.
Cut my losses earlier. Spent 2 years as a “research assistant” without entering the lab and just reading papers. Massive waste of time. Lost my senior year to an internship I disliked. Rotted for 6 months. Should’ve quit at the 3 month mark.
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u/Difficult_Ferret2838 1d ago
Work through the entirety of the python version of this course. Do every exercise.
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u/Gear5Tanjiro 1d ago
Python for sure!
A bit of Economics of the products and how the demand is changing maybe ?
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u/aybanbert01 23h ago
I’m completely new to Python - do you have any resources you’d recommend that helped you out?
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u/Gear5Tanjiro 23h ago
I haven't done it from a single place tbh. Not a structured learning I had in Python tbh.
I did some courses online and Youtube
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u/SubjectMountain6195 1d ago
Worry nor about AI replacing you because it will not. What more important is to use it as a tool to enhance your work. As a computer engineer i use it as a SEO to direct my focus on a specific concept.
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u/Half_Canadian 1d ago
I wouldn’t have passed my grad school course on python coding without ChatGPT. I understand coding language, but I learned MATLAB in undergrad and even that was a struggle because of syntax rules to make the code fail. I don’t need to continue using code at my job, but it’s nice to know that I don’t need to be as smart as a hacker bro if the situation arises again.
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u/RanmaRanmaRanma 10h ago
LEARN HOW TO TALK TO PEOPLE!!!! If I could bold, highlight, underline, italicize and scream it at anyone I would.
And I don't mean professionally talk, I mean actually being a people person. A chem E with a 4.0, 3 years of experience with an introverted personality won't go nearly as far as a 2.9 graduate with maybe a year of experience that can make an entire room laugh.
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u/intel_eater 2h ago
Understand more numerical methods/design and analysis of algorithms, optimization, statistics, and other relevant mathematics areas. these are basically the major topics being utilized in AI/ML, which has made the field useful and lucrative. I have a decent background that I developed and am using it in a ChemE application such as transport modeling, system optimization, simulations, reduced-order modeling/ algorithms for solving PDE, for batteries. That background has been tremendously helpful in my space. I just got a job making north of 400k for doing in principle, ChemE stuff (I’ll call it next-gen ChemE). I’m going to continue honing in on those topic areas I mentioned above to keep growing. Outside of batteries, I think there’s going to be more of these types of opportunities in pharmaceuticals, oil and gas, biotech, etc.
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u/Outrageous_Gap_1894 2h ago
I'm a current senior and I'm going to pursue a PhD or potentially an R&D job after graduating depending on how this admissions cycle goes. I started to transition from more experimental/hands on work to computational work over the past couple years (think Python, Jupyter Notebook, Bash, etc.) so I can keep up with the automation trends in research and industry. I'd get very familiar with programming, particularly Python, and potentially also some basic applied machine learning since these are increasingly valued. I've gotten interviews and even a high-paying internship offer solely because of a few research positions I've done that involved heavy Python work. Honestly though if I could do it again, for my specific field I'd probably do physics or math + CS as a slightly better fit but chemE has given me some pretty good mileage so far. Then again, I do computational molecular modeling so that may not be super applicable to others in the field.
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u/GreenSpace57 1d ago edited 1d ago
I future proofed my career by committing no crimes & working in volunteer/other positions with a very strong communication aspect to advertise myself. The degree makes you look smart regardless. Most ppl just can’t communicate politely/effectively