Career perspectives

Career opportunities are vast with this degree. Industry, research institutes, universities, schools and civil service offer interesting perspectives. Chemical expertise is sought after in many other areas as well – the following list comprises only a small fraction thereof: all economic activities around the topics of energy, food, environment and water, automotive and aircraft engineering, the insurance and consulting sector and many more.

Chemists / business chemists interested in working in the industry will find employment possibilities in:

• application-oriented industrial research
• roles responsible for manufacturing operations
• product development and application engineering, as interface between research   and production
• process engineering, transferring new findings from lab scale to industrial scale
• chemical analytics: there is an almost limitless variety of matter waiting to be analysed
• environment protection, to secure a liveable future of our planet
• marketing and sales, to serve customer demands and market opportunities
• patent law, for the legal protection of research findings
• documentation, with the purpose of developing and optimising functional and efficient structures in electronic data management
• corporate communication and public relations, in order to convey complex matters of science and research to the public in an easy-to-digest format

Chemists/business chemists interested in working in teaching and research can find employment:

• at schools, to spark pupils’ interest in Chemistry and scientific questions
• at universities and other higher education institutions, as part of an exciting environment of teaching and research
• in ‘pure’ fundamental research at research institutes, with the purpose of generating new chemistry knowledge and providing scientific proof

Chemists/business chemists interested in working in civil service can find employment:

• with federal and state authorities as well as municipal offices, in the areas of environment protection, supervision, licensing and analytics
• with the trade supervisory authority (Gewerbeaufsichtsamt), in the area of technical protection of the public
• in medical centres and various service sectors

Chemists/business chemists interested in alternative areas can find employment opportunities:

• in business consultancy
• as journalists and editors
• in freelance activity