<p>Just out of curiosity, where are most of the chemical engineering job positions typically located, especially those relating to pharmaceuticals, materials, and microelectronics/semi-conductors?</p>
<p>I meant like what cities, i.e. Chicago, Boston, NYC, California, etc.</p>
<p>oh, I'd also like to add alternative energy to the list...</p>
<p>California, specifically San Diego</p>
<p>Southern California Perspective:</p>
<p>Biotechs:
Start up biotechs are near SD. But those come and go. Amgen has a facility located in Thousand Oaks, Genentech in Oceanside. NorCal, I think Genentech has 2 or 3?</p>
<p>Petro/Petrochemical:
BP - Carson
Chevron - El Segundo
ConocoPhillips - Wilmington
Valero - Wilmington
(Most of them as you can see are down near Long Beach)</p>
<p>Chemical Manfacturing:
Procter and Gamble - Oxnard
3M - Monrovia, Santa Ana
Johnson and Johnson - ?
Valspar - Commerce, Montebello, Carson/Gardena
Rohm and Haas - (Don't remember)</p>
<p>Food/Beverage Manfacturing:
Frito-Lay: Bakersfield
Anheuser-Busch: Los Angeles
Miller: Los Angeles</p>
<p>Semiconductor:
I know Intel has one in Arizona, not sure about California.</p>
<p>California has some of the strictest air emission, water discharge regulations, soil contamination regulatory levels. A lot of these plants were grandfather clause/ or grandfather existed ushered into, it's pretty much impossible to build a huge manufacturing plant in the middle of Southern California. They have to constantly update their equipment to meet agency requirements (LA Regional Water Quality Control Board, South Coast Air Quality Management District, CalEPA, etc). Majority of the new plants if built are going to be in the middle of nowhere, where land is cheap. I know the land Chevron is on in El Segundo is worth a lot since they are the main supplier of jet fuel to LAX (they have their own pipe line feeding to LAX).</p>
<p>Alternative Energy like what? Solar? Geothermal? Wind? Biofuels? A lot of those mass production alternative energy facilities have to go through permitting through California Energy C omission (CEC), go check CEC website. Geothermal and solar plants are out in the middle of the hottest arid places (away from where people live), Mecca/Salton Sea/etc. Biofuels, those are unique, most of big oil is buying their biofuel from suppliers and blending it (B5, B20)</p>
<p>(Yes, I've been to over half of those facilities on the list. Some are nice, some are not so nice. I do regulation and compliance for them. I use my chemical engineering background to an environmental engineering application.)</p>
<ul>
<li>TB54</li>
</ul>
<p>Genentech is headquartered in South San Francisco with another manufacturing facility in Vacaville, CA and two small research facilities in Oceanside and somewhere in Oregon.</p>
<p>Johnson&Johnson is headquartered in New Brunswick, but they have facilities a lot of places, and subsidieries almost anywhere it seems.</p>
<p>Intel has a place near Sacramento.</p>
<p>Pharmaceuticals are a lot of places. San Diego I would say is mostly R&D. Go to biospace.com to get a better feel for the communities and locations. Hotbeds are the SF bay area, Seattle, Chicago/Indianapolis, Boston, and Reasearch Triangle in NC.</p>
<p>There are a lot of engineering jobs in general located on the I-85 corridor between Charlotte and Atlanta. Chem Eng is usually always needed. For example, Michelin North America, BMW, Milliken etc.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Just out of curiosity, where are most of the chemical engineering job positions typically located
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Assuming you're talking about just within the US, for ChemE in general, by far the largest concentration is on the Texas/Louisiana Gulf Coast. That's ChemE heaven without peer. </p>
<p>Another major region for ChemE activity would be the Mid-Atlantic Coast, i.e. Delaware, SE Pennsylvania (i.e. Philadelphia) and especially New Jersey. Surely we have heard all of the jokes about how New Jersey smells funny: the major reason for that is the large proliferation of chemical plants in the state. </p>
<p>
[quote]
pharmaceuticals, materials, and microelectronics/semi-conductors?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>For Pharma: By far, the greatest concentration is the aforementioned SE Pennsylvania and New Jersey, along with some activity in Connecticut (i.e. Pfizer, BMS, BI) the Midwest (i.e. Eli Lilly, Baxter, Wyeth), RTP in North Carolina, and Boston (i.e. Novartis). Many pharma manufacturing plants are also located in Puerto Rico, mostly for tax purposes. Many pharma companies are headquartered in NYC, but generally only sales, marketing finance, and business development are run there, with relatively little R&D or manufacturing. </p>
<p>For materials: Silicon Valley, the Boston Highway 128 area, and RTP are the most prominent. </p>
<p>For microelectronics: Silicon Valley, RTP and the Boston Highway 128 area are highly dominant for R&D and entrepreneurship. Major chip fabs are located in SV and Boston but also numerous other areas such as Phoenix, Portland Oregon, Dallas, & Austin. </p>
<p>
[quote]
alternative energy to the list.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>By far Silicon Valley, with Boston probably being a (distant) #2.</p>
<p>Hey thanks everyone for the responses.</p>
<p>Out of all of those places, living in Texas isn't my thing, and the upper east coast (i.e. Boston, NYC, etc.) are too cold and expensive, so I probably don't want to live there either. The mid-atlantic region, like NC, VA is appealing though, but you guys said that there isn't that much there as opposed to california, right? Is there still a good amount of stuff going on there, especially in the biomaterials/medical industry (that'll probably help narrow it down a bit)? I would have thought that because UNC and Duke are top-notch medical schools, there would be a lot of biologically-related research there, but I guess Cali or the east coast is still the place to be.</p>
<p>The reason also I'm wondering about this is because I'm looking at getting into patent law, or maybe getting an MBA and going into the corporate side of this stuff, so if I don't get a top JD or MBA, I need to go to a school with strong regional influence, and thus I need to know what are good regions to live in so I can plan accordingly.</p>
<p>RTP (Research Triangle Park) in NC is huge for engineers and that whole surrounding area. Look it up.</p>
<p>thanks for the responses guys, now can you tell me where most of the bioengineering research specifically happens for my friend (he's majoring in bioengineering)?</p>
<p>ChE jobs are pretty much everywhere.</p>