Electrical Engineer

MCA•Chesapeake, VA

About The Position

The Electrical Engineer provides plant-level engineering for electrical power, controls, automation, and equipment reliability in a continuous manufacturing environment. The role partners with Engineering, Maintenance, Production, HSE, Quality, Information Technology, vendors, and contractors to troubleshoot failures, design and execute upgrades, improve equipment availability, and ensure electrical and controls systems are documented, maintainable, secure, and aligned with company standards. The position combines hands-on field support with engineering analysis, project execution, commissioning, and technical stewardship of production assets and facility systems. The engineer designs, specifies, modifies, and supports industrial electrical and control systems, including power distribution, motor-control equipment, PLCs, HMIs, variable-frequency and DC drives, instrumentation, sensors, industrial networks, and machine-safety interfaces. The role also supports plant reliability and maintenance, leads or supports equipment upgrades and commissioning, integrates safety and compliance into engineering work, maintains technical documentation, and develops the capability of electricians and maintenance personnel. The salary range is $95,300–$119,100. Base pay may depend on the scope and responsibilities of the position, work experience, education and training, job-related skills, internal peer equity, market and business considerations, and geographic adjustment if authorization is granted to work outside the listed location. Competitive benefits begin on Day 1 and include Employee Assistance Programs and curated self-paced learning and development programs for all employees.

Responsibilities

Design, specify, modify, and support industrial electrical, control, automation, power distribution, and machine-safety systems.
Develop control narratives, functional requirements, I/O lists, panel layouts, schematics, network architecture, bills of material, and installation work packages.
Program, configure, troubleshoot, and improve Allen-Bradley, Mitsubishi, and Siemens PLC/HMI platforms and associated drive systems; support legacy systems and plan migrations for obsolete equipment.
Support SCADA and operational-technology systems, including Ignition integration, historian and data requirements, Ethernet/IP communications, managed switches, device addressing, time synchronization, and IT/OT coordination.
Diagnose equipment issues using electrical drawings, PLC logic, trend data, drive fault history, network diagnostics, and field measurements; maintain validated system backups and control access and changes.
Partner with electricians, mechanics, planners, and production personnel to troubleshoot breakdowns, investigate failures, and restore equipment safely and efficiently.
Lead or support root-cause investigations and turn findings into prioritized corrective actions with owners and verification of effectiveness.
Improve preventive and predictive maintenance for electrical assets, controls hardware, motors, drives, panels, field devices, and network infrastructure.
Review CMMS history, downtime data, alarms, work orders, and spare-parts usage to identify reliability opportunities and recurring problem equipment.
Develop critical-spare recommendations and specifications; support vendor selection, repair-versus-replace decisions, and lifecycle planning for obsolete or unsupported equipment.
Provide technical escalation during significant equipment events and participate in the on-call rotation or planned weekend work after orientation and training.
Develop scopes, alternatives, estimates, schedules, risk assessments, and technical justifications for capital and expense projects.
Lead or support upgrades, installations, and modifications from concept through startup, including design reviews, procurement support, acceptance testing, commissioning, punch-list closure, and turnover.
Coordinate multidisciplinary work involving mechanical systems, process requirements, electrical installation, controls integration, networking, utilities, and production constraints.
Ensure projects address machine guarding, interlocks, alarms, maintainability, safe access, energy isolation, and required documentation before final acceptance.
Monitor project cost and schedule; review technical quotations, purchase requisitions, change orders, invoices, and contractor deliverables within assigned authority.
Plan cutovers and startups with prerequisites, contingency plans, backups, rollback points, communications, and post-startup monitoring.
Integrate safety into design and troubleshooting through hazard reviews, risk assessments, management of change, pre-startup reviews, safe-work planning, and safeguard verification.
Follow and reinforce lockout/tagout, electrical safe-work practices, arc-flash requirements, energized-work restrictions, line-of-fire controls, PPE requirements, and machine-startup procedures.
Escalate conditions that may affect safety functions, interlocks, protective devices, environmental controls, or stable process control; ensure temporary bypasses and equipment are not left undocumented in service.
Support incident investigations, cause mapping, corrective actions, audits, and closure of electrical or engineering findings.
Ensure contractor work is scoped, permitted, coordinated, monitored, and completed in accordance with site safety and technical standards.
Create and maintain electrical one-lines, schematics, panel drawings, loop diagrams, network drawings, device/IP registers, software revision records, equipment files, and as-built documentation.
Apply document control and revision practices to keep field systems, drawings, code, and configuration records aligned.
Develop troubleshooting guides, technical procedures, standards, job plans, and training materials for electricians and maintenance personnel.
Coach technicians in systematic troubleshooting, PLC/HMI navigation, drive diagnostics, electrical drawings, controls documentation, and safe work practices.
Communicate technical risks, options, recommendations, and project status to technical and nontechnical stakeholders.
Participate in continuous-improvement, reliability, capital-planning, and manufacturing-systems roadmap activities.
Perform other related duties as assigned.