Environmental Engineer
An Environmental Engineer designs, develops, and oversees systems and processes to manage environmental impacts, pollution control, and resource recovery in industrial, commercial, and municipal settings across Australia.
What this job is
An Environmental Engineer designs, develops, and oversees systems and processes to manage environmental impacts, pollution control, and resource recovery in industrial, commercial, and municipal settings across Australia. They apply engineering principles to solve problems related to air quality, water treatment, waste management, and contamination remediation, working within Australian environmental legislation and standards set by state environmental protection authorities and the EPA where applicable.
Are employers advertising this role?
Falling, down 12.2% over 5 years
Counted across a group of similar roles. These are three-month rolling averages of online job advertisements, not filled positions.
Source: Jobs and Skills Australia, Internet Vacancy Index.
Day-to-day
Design wastewater treatment plants, stormwater management systems, and effluent discharge infrastructure compliant with state Environmental Protection Authority guidelines and licence conditions. Conduct environmental impact assessments and prepare environmental management plans to satisfy State Significant Development or Major Projects assessment requirements. Model air dispersion, noise propagation, and water quality using specialist software to predict environmental effects of proposed industrial or infrastructure projects. Develop remediation strategies for contaminated land, including soil and groundwater treatment, and prepare Environmental Site Assessments to Phase 3 standards. Design solid waste management systems, recycling facilities, and landfill engineering works in accordance with the National Waste Policy and state waste legislation. Calculate and optimise energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and water usage for industrial processes and recommend efficiency improvements. Prepare environmental licence applications, environmental management plans, and technical reports for submission to state regulators and local councils. Conduct environmental monitoring programmes including water sampling, air quality testing, and soil analysis, then interpret results against Australian environmental standards and guidelines.
Who does this now
About 1,700 people worked in this occupation across Australia at the 2021 Census.
What this role asks for
Bachelor degree or higher (ABS skill level 1)
Registration or licensing may be required.
Can employers fill these jobs
Employers hiring for this occupation had trouble finding suitable applicants in 2025. This measures how hard employers found it to fill jobs. It is not a count of jobs, and it does not say whether the occupation is growing.
Requirements
The standard entry pathway requires a bachelor degree or higher (ABS Skill Level 1). Specific qualification requirements vary by employer and state. Some employers may accept equivalent experience. Check yourcareer.gov.au for available courses and dewr.gov.au/skills-reform/free-tafe for subsidised training options.
The honest hard part
You'll need to get your engineering degree accredited and often complete professional development to understand state-specific environmental laws. The real grind is that much of your time goes to compliance paperwork and dealing with slow regulatory approvals rather than creative design work. Pay can be modest compared to other engineering fields, and job growth depends heavily on whether governments prioritise environmental projects.
Where the jobs are
Regional areas have some demand for contamination clean-up work, but most permanent roles are in metro areas.
Pay
Published for ANZSCO unit group 2339, the wider group this job sits in, not for this job on its own.
This is the median for full-time employees who are not managers and are paid at the adult rate, before tax and salary sacrifice. It is a guide to what the work pays, not a wage rate.
Source: ABS Survey of Employee Earnings and Hours, May 2025, customised report.
Skills
- Advise on environmental remediationcore
- Attention to Detailcore
- Data Entry and Accuracycore
- Incident Reportingcore
- Policy Interpretationcore
- Problem Solvingcore
- Process Improvement Identificationcore
- Regulatory and Legislative Awarenesscore
- Report Writingcore
- Research and Analysiscore
- Risk Identificationcore
- Stakeholder Communicationcore
- Team Collaborationcore
- Written Communicationcore
- Adjust engineering designs
- Continuous Learning and Upskilling
- Correspondence Drafting
- Goal Setting and Planning
- Microsoft Office Suite Proficiency
- Negotiation
- Process Documentation
- Record Management
- Reporting and Analytics
- Time Management and Prioritisation
- Verbal Communication
Which of these do you have?
Tick the ones you haveCommon questions
Sources
- ABS OSCA 2024, occupation definition and task statements
- ABS Survey of Employee Earnings and Hours, May 2025, customised report.
- ABS, 2021 Census of Population and Housing based on usual place of residence (Custom Report). OSCA Experimental Estimates.
Role data is drawn from official Australian Government sources, and each figure names where it comes from. Where a role is not in the ABS classification, the page shows no government figures for it. Data may not reflect every local variation.
Last updated: 30 October 2026
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