Health & Safety Engineer

Health and safety engineers typically work in offices. However, they also must spend time at worksites when necessary, which sometimes requires travel.

Some of the things health and safety engineers might do:

• Maintain and apply knowledge of current health and safety policies, regulations, and industrial processes
• Review plans and specifications for new machinery and equipment to make sure that they meet safety requirements
• Identify and correct potential hazards by inspecting facilities, machinery, and safety equipment
• Evaluate the effectiveness of various industrial control mechanisms
• Ensure that buildings or products comply with health and safety regulations, especially after an inspection that required changes
• Install safety devices on machinery or direct the installation of these devices
• Review employee safety programs and recommend improvements

• Communication skills. Health and safety engineers must be able to interpret federal and state regulations and their intent so that they can propose proper designs for specific work environments. Health and safety engineers also prepare and present training materials to workers and must be able to describe new regulations and procedures to a variety of audiences.
• Creativity. Health and safety engineers produce designs showing potential problems and remedies for them. They must be creative, in order to deal with situations that are unique to a project.
• Critical-thinking skills. Health and safety engineers must be able to identify hazards to humans and property in the workplace or in the home before those hazards cause material damage or become a health threat.
• Observational skills. Health and safety engineers must observe and learn how operations function so that they can identify risks to people and property. This requires the ability to think in terms of overall processes within an organization. Health and safety engineers can then recommend systemic changes to minimize risks.
• Problem-solving skills. In designing solutions for entire organizational operations, health and safety engineers must take into account processes from more than one system at the same time. In addition, they must try to anticipate a range of human reactions to the changes they recommend.

The average pay for health and safety engineers in the United States was $103,690 in May 2023 according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

A health and safety engineer’s pay depends on factors such as level of experience, education and training, geographic location, and specific industry.

About 1,300 new job openings for health and safety engineers are projected each year, on average, over the next 10 years in the United States.

Overall employment of health and safety engineers is projected to grow 4 percent from 2022 to 2032 according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is about as fast as the average growth rate for all occupations.

Health and safety engineers are employed mainly in manufacturing, engineering and consulting firms, construction, and state and local government.

As buildings, products, and processes continue to become more complex and new regulations are created, these engineers will be needed to reduce costs, save lives, and produce safe consumer products.

Entry-level jobs for health and safety engineers require a bachelor’s degree, typically in environmental health and safety or in an engineering discipline, such as electrical, chemical, mechanical, industrial, or systems engineering.

Bachelor’s degree programs typically include classroom, laboratory, and field studies in applied engineering. Engineering students interested in becoming health and safety engineers also should take courses in occupational safety and health, industrial hygiene, ergonomics, or environmental safety. ABET accredits programs in engineering.

Discover some of the courses you will take pursuing a degree in Environmental Health and Safety.