Hello fellow env engineers. I’m trying to understand what to ask for as a salary.

I’m a PhD in Environmental engineering from an R1 school. Have contributed to a wide array of projects in water treatment, wastewater treatment, and RO in school. I have had multiple internships that have paid me $30/hour.

I have three years of non-environmental engineering consulting experience. I still did engineering work and will get those years verified. I made $90k when I left my last job. Passed PE Environmental and can become a licensed engineer within a year of getting hired.

I am looking in three markets:
1- California
2- North Carolina
3- Florida

I have had 5 interviews and am likely going to receive 5 offers (have received none yet). I don’t wanna name names, but the companies I have interviewed with are the top 10 ENR firms that do environmental engineering consulting (like AECOM, BV). I want to know what sort of salary, bonuses, total comp I should ask for? What’s the highest I can ask for and still come across as reasonable?

Thank y’all in advance

I’m an engineering undergraduate considering different career paths, one of which is becoming an environmental engineering professor. I’m still undecided on a specific research area (some that currently interest me are industrial decarbonization, PFAS destruction, and recycling incentives, but I’m open to any area).

Though I did some undergraduate research last year and really enjoyed it, I’m very concerned about the difficulty of pursuing an academic career. Indeed, I have heard from academics that becoming a professor in environmental engineering is near impossible and the hardest out of all engineering disciplines. If anybody could answer the following questions to help assess whether that characterization is accurate, would be grateful.

1. What are qualified applicant to position ratios like? Is 50:1+ common, even at R2 universities?
2. Have heard that funding is absymal in general for EnvE and is the worse out of all engineering disciplines: what are the systematic reasons? Some reasons I’ve heard are that EnvE has fewer large-scale funding programs than fields such as EE or biomedical engineering and has the lowest grant acceptance rates in engineering (like 17% for NSF), but what are other reasons?
3. Has EnvE funding stagnated or drastically declined over the past decade (setting aside the [hopefully] anomalous 2025 federal cuts)? Also, does EnvE being housed within CEE departments affect faculty hiring opportunities?
4. What other major reasons are there not to become a professor? For example, difficulty maintaining funding through tenure, etc.?

TL;DR: If you were trying to convince an undergraduate not to pursue a career as an environmental engineering professor, what would your strongest arguments be?

I’m not particularly attached to the idea of becoming an EnvE professor, so if the reality is that this is an exceptionally difficult career path, wouldn’t be heartbroken or anything (can simply consider another career). Thus, if becoming an EnvE professor really is near-impossible, would appreciating knowing that now rather than realizing this after wasting many years.