Senior Reliability Engineer

Job Summary

The Senior Reliability Engineer supports the facility's maintenance and reliability strategy by providing engineering expertise for plant issues affecting production and improving the reliability, availability, and performance of plant assets.

Responsibilities

• Develop and implement maintenance and reliability strategies aligned with plant safety, production, quality, and cost objectives.
• Monitor and improve maintenance KPIs, work processes, procedures, schedules, PM compliance, work-order backlogs, downtime, equipment availability, reliability, and maintenance costs.
• Analyze equipment, process, maintenance, and operating data to identify risks, recurring failures, bad actors, and improvement opportunities.
• Lead Root Cause Investigations, failure analyses, FMEAs, RCM studies, and other reliability assessments; develop, track, and verify corrective and preventive actions.
• Provide technical and troubleshooting support for unplanned events, equipment failures, repairs, modifications, turnarounds, outages, and critical maintenance activities.
• Develop and review repair procedures, job plans, scopes, specifications, and quality-control plans for critical equipment and spare parts, ensuring requirements such as materials, clearances, tolerances, welding procedures, inspections, and as-left conditions are documented.
• Oversee QA/QC for plant and third-party maintenance and repair activities, address deficiencies, and ensure compliance with approved procedures and technical requirements.
• Evaluate and optimize Preventive, Predictive, and Condition-Based Maintenance programs using equipment history, failure modes, risk, and monitoring results.
• Support condition-monitoring programs, equipment reliability strategies, operator rounds, PPM reviews, procedure development, parts identification, and small reliability improvement initiatives.
• Provide reliability and maintainability expertise for high-pressure polyethylene and other critical plant equipment, including compressors, reactors, extruders, pelletizers, pressure vessels, piping, valves, utilities, and related systems.
• Investigate failures involving pressure, temperature, cyclic loading, fatigue, vibration, erosion, corrosion, polymer buildup, plugging, seals, lubrication, and process instability.
• Collaborate with Operations, Process Engineering, Maintenance, Inspection, Projects, Procurement, MRO, and other technical teams to improve equipment performance and address the effects of process and operating changes.
• Provide reliability, maintainability, lifecycle-cost, equipment-selection, spare-parts, and purchasing input to projects, modifications, debottlenecking, specifications, and vendor evaluations.
• Participate in project and process-safety activities, including FEL, value engineering, design reviews, HAZOPs, LOPAs, MOC, PSSR, commissioning, and startup.
• Use SAP to review work orders, equipment history, maintenance plans, failure codes, bills of material, and spare-parts data.
• Manage vendor quality notifications, follow up on corrective actions, and share technical guidance, lessons learned, and reliability practices across the plant.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, Chemical Engineering, or a closely related engineering discipline.
• Minimum of 8 years of experience in plant reliability, maintenance engineering, asset performance, or a closely related industrial engineering function.
• Experience in a chemical, petrochemical, polymer, refinery, or continuous-process manufacturing environment is required; high-pressure polyethylene experience is strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated knowledge of reliability engineering principles and methodologies, including RCI, RCA, FMEA, RCM, Preventive/Predictive Maintenance, equipment criticality, condition monitoring, and reliability analysis.
• Working knowledge of industrial equipment, maintenance practices, process operations, and mechanical integrity requirements.
• Experience analyzing equipment performance, maintenance, cost, downtime, and failure data and translating findings into actionable improvements.
• Experience with SAP, ERP, CMMS, or comparable maintenance-management systems.
• Familiarity with HAZOP, PHA, LOPA, MOC, PSSR, process safety, and mechanical-integrity processes.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, communication, presentation, organizational, and cross-functional collaboration skills.
• Ability to lead multidisciplinary teams, work independently, manage multiple priorities, and influence without direct supervisory authority.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in a high-pressure polyethylene, LDPE, EVA, polymerization, or similar polymer manufacturing facility.
• Experience with hyper compressors, high-pressure compressors, reactors, pressure vessels, high-pressure piping, extruders, pelletizers, and polymer-processing systems.
• Mechanical engineering experience with rotating equipment, pressure equipment, piping, vibration, lubrication, and mechanical integrity.
• Experience with Weibull analysis, Six Sigma, reliability modeling, Power BI, PI System, or asset-performance-management software.
• CMRP, CRE, Six Sigma, or other relevant professional certification.
• Experience supporting capital projects from concept development through commissioning and startup.