Refinery Operator I
Location
East Chicago, IN
Wage
$25.47/hr
Posted on September 1, 2026
Location
East Chicago, IN
Wage
$25.47/hr
Posted on September 1, 2026
Safety-Kleen is seeking a Refinery Operator to join our team in East Chicago, IN. This Union position focuses on refinery operations and requires flexibility to work various shifts.
At roughly $25/hr, this posting comes in about 12% below the $29/hr median for welding jobs across Indiana, where the middle half runs $23–$31/hr across 92 postings with published pay. Put another way, it pays more than about 35% of the comparable postings we have wage data for. That gap is worth raising directly — in a market this size there is normally room to negotiate toward the median, particularly if you already hold the certifications the posting asks for.
East Chicago, IN currently has 5 other active welding openings besides this one, spread across 5 employers. 2 of them were added in the last week. Across Indiana as a whole we're tracking 168 other active welding openings from 106 employers. That's enough local activity to be worth comparing two or three offers before committing. Browse every welding job in East Chicago, or widen the search to Indiana.
The most active employers in Indiana at the moment, by number of open welding reqs, are NCW (36), Aerotek (6), and SMS group (4). Volume like that usually means either a genuine expansion or a staffing agency working several client sites — worth knowing which before you apply.
Pay figures are medians computed from live postings in the Welding Pros index, not from survey data, and they move as employers post. Refinery Operator I figures were last recalculated when this page was built.