Food Processing Engineer

Career Area: Engineering

Occupation Group: Chemical, Biomedical, and Related Engineering

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 Food Processing Engineer earns the following wages (national and state):

State

The average salary in North Carolina for those pursuing this career is $85,291

National

The average salary in the United States for those pursuing this career is $82,370

What Does a Professional in this Career Do?

Develops and engineers equipment and processes used for food product manufacturing. Designs equipment and systems for handling or packaging food products. May work with research scientists to develop and produce new food products.

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 Food Processing Engineer is expected to have in order to experience success in this field:

• Communication Skills: The ability to convey information to another effectively and efficiently.
• Problem Solving: Problem solving consists of using generic or ad hoc methods, in an orderly manner, for finding solutions to problems.
• Troubleshooting: Troubleshooting or dpanneuring is a form of problem solving, often applied to repair failed products or processes on a machine or a system.
• Teamwork / Collaboration: Experience working in collaborative efforts with a team to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in the most effective and efficient way.
• Microsoft Office: Microsoft Office is an office suite of applications, servers, and services developed by Microsoft.

Specialized Skills

These skills are specific to working in this career:

• Process Engineering: Process engineering focuses on the design, operation, control, optimization and Intensification of chemical, physical, and biological processes.
• Project Management: Project management is the discipline of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria.
• Food Safety: Food safety is a scientific discipline describing handling, preparation, and storage of food in ways that prevent foodborne illness.
• Chemical Engineering: Chemical engineering is a branch of engineering that applies physical sciences (physics and chemistry), life sciences (microbiology and biochemistry), together with applied mathematics and economics to produce, transform, transport, and properly use chemicals, materials and energy.
• Commissioning: Working experience of Commissioning. Commissioning, a process or service provided to validate the completeness and accuracy of a project or venture: Building commissioning, a quality assurance process during and following building construction.

Distinguishing Skills

Any Food Processing Engineer that possesses the following skills will stand out against the competition:

• Design of experiments (DOE): The design of experiments (DOE, DOX, or experimental design) is the design of any task that aims to describe or explain the variation of information under conditions that are hypothesized to reflect the variation.
• New Product Development: In business and engineering, new product development (NPD) covers the complete process of bringing a new product to market.
• Sanitary Design and Controls:
• Total productive maintenance: Working experience of Total productive maintenance, which is a system of maintaining and improving the integrity of production and quality systems through the machines, equipment, processes, and employees that add business value to an organization.
• Equipment Design: Manufacturing equipment is the platform for the operation of unit processes. Properly designed equipment is essential for the production of high-quality, cost-effective products. Equipment design is necessarily the broadest category of the six enabling technologies, since it ultimately serves as the vehicle to implement all of the other enabling technologies.

Salary Boosting Skills

A professional who wishes to excel in this career path may consider developing the following highly valued skills:

• Technology Transfer: Technology transfer, also called transfer of technology (TOT), is the process of transferring (disseminating) technology from the places and ingroups of its origination to wider distribution among more people and places.
• Sanitary Design and Controls:
• Process Design: In chemical engineering, process design is the design of processes for desired physical and/or chemical transformation of materials.
• Beverage Industry knowledge: The beverage industry refers to the industry that produces drinks, in particular ready to drink beverages.

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:

• Process Engineer
• Senior Process Engineer
• Food Process Engineer
• Mid-Level Food & Beverage Process Engineer
• Process Engineer - Food And Beverage

Similar Occupations

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

• Process Engineer
• Agriculture & Food Engineering Manager
• Welding Process Engineer