Full Job Description
Maintenance Reliability Engineer
Are you a Mechanical Engineer who enjoys getting out from behind the desk, troubleshooting equipment, and solving reliability challenges where your work has a direct impact on plant performance?
Mitsubishi Chemical America is looking for a Maintenance Reliability Engineer to join our SoarnoL team in La Porte, Texas. This is an opportunity to take ownership of equipment reliability while working closely with Maintenance, Operations, and Engineering in a hands-on chemical manufacturing environment.
This role is ideal for an engineer who combines strong mechanical fundamentals with practical field experience. You'll spend approximately 50% of your time focused on reliability initiatives, 30–40% supporting equipment and troubleshooting in the field, and the remainder supporting reliability and capital projects.
What You'll Do
As a key mechanical and reliability resource for the site, you will:
- Troubleshoot mechanical equipment issues alongside Maintenance and Operations, providing second-level technical support when problems require engineering expertise.
- Improve the reliability and performance of both rotating and stationary equipment, including pumps, mechanical seals, bearings, blowers, piping, valves, tanks, and pressure vessels.
- Investigate recurring equipment failures and develop practical, sustainable solutions that improve equipment performance and reduce downtime.
- Apply maintenance and reliability best practices, including Root Cause Failure Analysis (RCFA), Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM), FMEA, and asset criticality principles.
- Support mechanical systems and reliability-related Management of Change (MOC) activities.
- Partner with the Engineering team on capital projects to ensure maintenance and reliability requirements are incorporated into equipment design and installation.
- Develop concepts and technical documentation for maintenance-related equipment repairs, replacements, and improvements.
- Support equipment checkout, commissioning, and start-up activities.
- Participate in Process Hazard Analyses, safety audits, and incident investigations as needed.
- Maintain equipment documentation, engineering files, procedures, specifications, and drawings to support long-term mechanical integrity.
What We're Looking For
- Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering
- 5+ years of mechanical engineering experience in a chemical plant environment
- Strong hands-on experience maintaining, troubleshooting, repairing, overhauling, or installing rotating machinery and stationary equipment
- Working knowledge of pumps, mechanical seals, bearings, piping, valves, tanks, and pressure vessels
- Knowledge of maintenance and reliability best practices
- Understanding of Process Safety Management (PSM), particularly as it relates to mechanical and asset integrity
- Experience with reliability methodologies such as RCM, FMEA, asset criticality, or root cause analysis
- Ability to work effectively across Maintenance, Operations, Engineering, and SHE teams
Preferred Qualifications
- Certified Maintenance & Reliability Professional (CMRP) or Certified Reliability Engineer (CRE)
- Root Cause Failure Analysis training
- Experience with centrifugal and positive displacement pumps
- Experience supporting mechanical reliability improvements within a PSM-covered chemical or process manufacturing facility
Why This Role?
This isn't a reliability position where you'll spend all day analyzing data from behind a desk. You'll have the opportunity to be visible in the plant, work directly with the equipment, partner with experienced maintenance professionals, and solve real mechanical reliability challenges.
If you're a Mechanical Engineer who enjoys understanding why equipment fails—and figuring out how to keep it from happening again—we'd love to hear from you.
The salary range for this position is $130,000–$140,000. Factors such as scope and responsibilities of the position, candidate’s work experience, education/training, job-related skills, internal peer equity, as well as market and business considerations may influence base pay offered. This salary may also be subject to geographic adjustment if authorization is granted to work outside of the posted location.
