Environmental Engineer

You design solutions to environmental problems — water treatment, air pollution, waste management, contaminated site cleanup — which means you're cleaning up messes that took decades to create and everyone wants fixed by next quarter. You'll model contaminant transport, design remediation systems, and navigate environmental regulations that are simultaneously too strict and not strict enough depending on who you ask.

What you'll actually do

• 01Design water and wastewater treatment systems that must meet discharge limits the EPA doesn't make easy to achieve
• 02Investigate contaminated sites and figure out what's in the soil and groundwater, how it got there, and how to remove it
• 03Write environmental impact assessments and remediation plans that satisfy regulators, clients, and budgets simultaneously
• 04Collect field samples from sites that range from mildly unpleasant to full hazmat suit territory
• 05Model contaminant fate and transport using software that requires a PhD-level understanding of hydrogeology
• 06Navigate EPA, state, and local environmental regulations that change frequently and contradict each other regularly