Advanced Process Control Engineer

Basic Function

The position has the responsibility for supporting and improving the Basic Regulatory and Advanced Process Control (APC) applications, as well as identifying and implementing new control applications to improve process throughput, profitability, stability, reliability, and safety. The position generates a broad range of challenges, which require routine interaction with other work groups to ensure maximum value is derived from the control systems.

Roles & Responsibilities

• Define, develop, document, and support DCS / PLC / SIS regulatory control strategies for providing process stability and process safety
• Conceive, justify, design, and commission new APC applications to support production and improve product quality controls
• Work closely with onsite Operations, Technical, and Maintenance Departments, as well as the corporate APC group to define operating strategies at the site
• The APC Engineer will ensure alignment with regulatory and APC controller strategies
• Maintain existing APC applications at South Texas Polymers sites 
• Perform audits of APC applications benefits
• Provide technical consultation, formal and informal training for process control applications at the site
• Act in a support or team role for a variety of process control projects
• Participate in Engineering, Outage / Turnaround, and applicable PSM activities including PHAs, MOCs, PSSRs
• Responsible for maintaining the relevant PSI documentation and managing action items in Intelex system.
• Show strong commitment to HSE and Process Safety
• Ability to work across multi-disciplinary teams and interact with different groups within the organization

Min. Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in an engineering discipline
• Minimum of 5+ years of refinery or petrochemical manufacturing engineering experience, polymers experience preferred.
• 5+ years prior experience in control systems and APC technologies

Preferred Qualifications

• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal
• Strong leadership and organizational skills
• Self-motivated and highly enterprising 
• Good computing skills
• Knowledge and experience with trend analyses on equipment / system / controls failures (e.g., TrendMiner, AspenWatch)
• Understanding of Foxboro and Emerson control systems 
• Innovative thinking to solve complex process / process controls problems
• Technical understanding of Polymers processes is an advantage

Competencies