Environmental Field Chemist

Career Area: Science and Research

Occupation Group: Chemical and Physical Science

Salary

Percentile wages tell how much a certain percentage of an overall population in a geographic area or within a given industry or field makes. The percentile wage estimate is the value of a wage below which a certain percent of workers fall.

An example would be the 25th percentile, 25 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 75 percent earn more than the estimated wage value. At the 75th percentile, 75 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 25 percent earn more than the estimated wage value.

A typical Environmental Field Chemist earns the following wages (national and state):

State

The average salary in North Carolina for those pursuing this career is $48,172

National

The average salary in the United States for those pursuing this career is $56,163

What Does a Professional in this Career Do?

Samples, tests and assists with the clean up of hazardous materials at field sites. Ensures the safe handling and transport of hazardous chemicals and environmental regulatory compliance.

Employment Trends

The job demand and job growth statistics shown here were derived from job posts over the past year. Expected job growth projections are extrapolated from year-over-year job post listing history.

Job demand and job growth is expected at the following rates:

Skills

A professional in this position typically utilizes the following skills in the course of everyday work in this exciting and challenging field:

Baseline Skills

The following are baseline skills every Environmental Field Chemist is expected to have in order to experience success in this field:

• Communication Skills: The ability to convey information to another effectively and efficiently.
• Research: Experience performing creative and systematic work to understand a product, market, or customer, either before building a new solution, or to troubleshoot an existing issue
• Detail-Oriented: A detail oriented person is someone who pays attention to the details and can make a conscious effort to understand causes instead of just the effects, and that does this in a second nature type of way.
• Troubleshooting: Troubleshooting or dpanneuring is a form of problem solving, often applied to repair failed products or processes on a machine or a system.
• Microsoft Excel: Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet developed by Microsoft for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications.

Specialized Skills

These skills are specific to working in this career:

• Chemistry: Chemistry is a branch of physical science that studies the composition, structure, properties and change of matter.
• Hazardous Waste: Hazardous waste is waste that poses substantial or potential threats to public health or the environment.
• Biology: Biology is the natural science that involves the study of life and living organisms, including their physical and chemical structure, function, development and evolution.
• Packaging: Packaging is the technology of enclosing or protecting products for distribution, storage, sale, and use.
• Quality Assurance and Control: Working experience with processes used to measure and assure the quality of a product and ensuring products and services meet consumer expectations.

Distinguishing Skills

Any Environmental Field Chemist that possesses the following skills will stand out against the competition:

• Mass Spectrometry: Mass spectrometry (MS) is an analytical technique that ionizes chemical species and sorts the ions based on their mass-to-charge ratio.
• Gas Chromatography: Gas chromatography (GC) is a common type of chromatography used in analytical chemistry for separating and analyzing compounds that can be vaporized without decomposition.
• Organic Chemistry: Organic chemistry is a chemistry subdiscipline involving the scientific study of the structure, properties, and reactions of organic compounds and organic materials, i.e., matter in its various forms that contain carbon atoms.

Experience

This position typically requires the following level of experience. The numbers presented in the pie charts below were derived from actual job posts over the past year. Not all job postings list experience requirements.

Common Job Titles

It is possible to find work in this field in positions commonly listed as the following job titles:

• Field Chemist
• Environmental Field Chemist
• Insite Chemist
• Chemist
• Environmental Chemist

Similar Occupations

If you are interested in exploring similar occupations, you may want to research the following job titles:

• Research and Development Chemist