Also called: Food Engineer, Food Manufacturing Engineer
Designs and improves how food is cooked, packaged, preserved and kept safe in factories.
Chips are coming out of the fryer too dark on one side. You check oil temperatures and conveyor speed, adjust the fryer, then run a test batch and send samples to the taste panel.
Approximate: anchored on Bureau of Labor Statistics data for a broader job group.
Bachelor's degree (4-year), about 4 years after high school. Bachelor's in food, agricultural, chemical or mechanical engineering.
Ways in: 4-year college. Training cost: $15k – $60k.
Majors to look at: Food Engineering, Agricultural Engineering, Chemical Engineering.
Growing about average. Steady demand across the food industry.
Medium risk for 10 years. AI vision and smart controls run more of the food line; scale-up, sanitation design and fixing problems stay human.
Classes: Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Family and consumer science.
Official data: O*NET occupation 17-2199.
Career Universe is an early version. Pay, training and AI-risk figures are estimates to start your own research, not verified facts. The research was written with AI research assistants, checked by validation scripts and spot-checked by hand. Check anything important with schools, employers and official sources. How the numbers work.