Job Title: Principal Environmental Engineer​

Organization: WSSC Water

Career Overview: My role at WSSC Water is to support the water treatment processes to ensure that we provide continuous delivery of safe drinking water to our customers. I spend my time figuring out better ways to run existing facilities or design new facilities. In addition, I must remain current with changes in regulations, current environmental issues, and new research that relates to water quality and treatment.

A Day on the Job: I do a lot of learning, thinking and planning. For example, someone raises a treatment issue to my attention. I try to gather all the information I need to understand the issue, whether by talking to the operators, observing the process, looking at past reports or engineering drawings, analyzing operational data, or researching old and new ideas about how the treatment process should work. I may need to find an expert to ask for help with subjects outside of my experience. I might plan possible improvements and sometimes run small or big experiments to test those solutions. Usually, I will need to pull it all together to present the problem and my recommendations to those who will make the final decision about what to do about the issue.

Skills Needed: Writing, listening, and communicating with people in all sorts of roles. Also, a constant willingness to learn, consider new information, and try new solutions; good foundations in environmental science and engineering.

Education: It has been beneficial for me to have a graduate degree (Masters or Ph.D.) because it gave me extra practice in forming and answering research questions and analyzing data.

Experience and Training: After I finished graduate school in environmental engineering, I taught for several years in an Environmental Science and Engineering program. Teaching was not a required experience for my current job, but it prepared me to think more about how all the different aspects of our environment relate to each other. A lot of our environmental problems exist because of our high consumption lifestyles. As a teacher, I had to understand science better myself. Before that, I completed a Ph.D., which is when you research a topic and don’t have an answer key like in a math textbook. This was practical training because a lot of my work involves encountering a problem, then finding the possible solutions if someone out there has not already done so.

Personal Career Path: It turns out I am a lot like my dad. I caught his outlook on environmental stewardship throughout my childhood but did not realize until I went to college that my dad was an environmental engineer! Another influence was an international career fair that I attended after finishing my bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. The fair opened my eyes to the need for safe water and a clean environment worldwide and the multitude of careers that could support this. Along the way, I had some fantastic professors who showed me how you could use your science smarts to serve the community.

Pay and Job Outlook: Job opportunities abound because every town needs safe drinking water, and lots of jobs support this (technical jobs, advocates, policymakers, educators, researchers). The starting salary for an environmental engineer is probably around $60,000 - $70,000, and there is usually additional pay that comes with extra education and experience.

Favorite and Most Challenging Aspect to the Job: I like when I have put in the hard work to understand a problem well and can recommend a solution that works, something that saves resources, maybe makes other people’s job easier, or helps the community in ways they may never realize. And I like working with people and learning about all their different backgrounds.

Advice for Young Professionals Interested in This Career: There are news articles everywhere showing how the results of our work affect real people in our community. I think this industry needs people who will make decisions with integrity and look out for the good of others, even those they do not know personally. For example, most of us take safe drinking water for granted, but it is key to health, fostering community, education, work and recreation.