Chemical Engineer Salary in New York 2026,
$129,060 Median | BLS Data by City

The published New York figure is $129,060 a year, or $62.05 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with a band from $81,520 at the 10th percentile to $146,180 at the 90th and quartiles at $89,440 and $145,670. That is 3.2% above the national median of $125,040. The row is SOC 17-2041, Chemical Engineers — an exact match, but resting on a statewide workforce of only 540 people.

Rochester at $133,740, then Albany-Schenectady-Troy $129,060, New York-Newark-Jersey City $126,830 and Buffalo-Cheektowaga $112,770. Only four New York metros publish a figure for this occupation at all, which is itself a measure of how thin the state's chemical engineering employment is. The ordering puts the upstate technology corridors ahead of the metropolitan area.

Usually not. New York's Office of the Professions licenses professional engineers through the State Board for Engineering and Land Surveying, but the industrial exemption means engineering work performed for a manufacturer's own products and processes does not require licensure. The PE is required to offer engineering services to the public and to seal documents — which in practice means consulting, environmental permitting and public agency work. Most chemical engineers employed in New York industry never need it.

Because the industries that employ them at scale are largely absent. Petrochemicals, refining and bulk chemical manufacturing are concentrated on the Gulf coast and in the Ohio valley, not in New York. The state's 540 chemical engineers, at a location quotient of 0.41, work mostly in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, speciality materials, semiconductor processing and environmental consulting. That is a narrow but reasonably well-paid set of employers, and it is why the metro table favours Rochester and the Capital Region over New York City.

Less than on most pages, and it is worth saying so. A 540-job workforce is one of the smallest OEWS state cells this site publishes, and the upper percentiles in particular rest on few observations — which is why the 75th at $145,670 and the 90th at $146,180 sit less than a percent apart, an implausible result for a real distribution. Treat the median of $129,060 and the lower percentiles as reasonably solid, and the top of the band as indicative rather than precise.

Four things, roughly. Pharmaceutical and biotechnology manufacturing, where process validation and scale-up are the core work. Speciality materials and optics, historically concentrated around Rochester and reflected in its $133,740 metro figure. Semiconductor and advanced manufacturing process work in the Capital Region, which sits behind Albany-Schenectady-Troy's $129,060. And environmental and remediation consulting, which is distributed across the state and is the one branch where the professional engineer licence is a working requirement rather than an option. What is absent is the refining and bulk chemicals sector that dominates the occupation nationally, and its absence explains both the 0.41 location quotient and the fact that New York City does not lead the metro table.

The wage data gives no strong reason to. New York's $129,060 sits within a couple of percent of West Virginia $129,210, Washington $128,290, Oklahoma $127,790, Montana $127,490 and Maryland $127,190 — a remarkably tight peer group — while New York's income tax runs to 10.9% with a further 3.078% to 3.876% for city residents, and Washington levies none at all. The case for New York is sectoral rather than financial: if the target is pharmaceutical process engineering or semiconductor manufacturing, the state has genuine clusters. If the target is chemical engineering generally, 540 jobs and about 30 pro-rated annual openings is a very thin market to plan a relocation around.

In consulting and in public work. The industrial exemption covers the majority of the state's chemical engineering employment, so a process engineer in a pharmaceutical plant can build an entire career without licensure. But environmental permitting, remediation design, and any engineering service offered to the public or a public agency requires a licensed professional engineer to seal the documents, and New York's Office of the Professions issues that licence on the basis of an accredited degree, the Fundamentals of Engineering and Principles and Practice examinations and qualifying experience. Given how much of New York's chemical engineering demand sits in environmental consulting, the licence is worth more here relative to the size of the market than the industrial exemption alone would suggest.