Engineer Principal - Advanced Process Control

Westlake-posted 4 days ago

Full-time • Principal

Houston, TX

5,001-10,000 employees

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Westlake offers you the potential to enrich your work life and career experience in an entrepreneurial environment. We work together to enhance peoples' lives through our products and presence in the communities in which we operate. Summary Westlake’s Digital Office is at the forefront of digital transformation, driving operational excellence and significant enhancements in customer experience across our global manufacturing portfolio. As a Principal APC Engineer, you will lead the identification, design, implementation, and maintenance of advanced process control and optimization applications across Westlake’s Performance and Essential Materials (PEM) manufacturing plants, with a focus on a variety of APC platforms, including AspenTech, Rockwell Automation, and Honeywell APC platforms. You will partner with Data Scientists, Plant Operators, Process Engineers, and Digital Office colleagues to deploy and sustain robust APC solutions that deliver measurable improvements in safety, reliability, efficiency, product quality, and sustainability objectives. Your expertise will directly support Westlake’s multi-year APC strategy, targeting multi-million-dollar annual benefits and harmonization of control systems across diverse technologies and sites.

Responsible for the entire lifecycle of an APC project, including identification, design, implementation, and maintenance of APC Applications for real-time process optimization across PEM manufacturing sites.
Analyze process dynamics and operation challenges, and develop advanced control strategies, including multivariable control, advanced PID, sequence control, and interlocks, etc.
Proactively monitor, troubleshoot, and tune APC and base layer PID controller performance, ensuring uptime and benefit realization targets are met.
Support the implementation and maintenance of the company-wide APC KPI Dashboard system.
Re-evaluate and adapt control strategies in response to plant operating condition changes.
Integrate APC systems with DCS, PLCs, laboratory information systems, and plant historians (e.g., InfoPlus.21 and OSIsoft PI).
Support plant operations during turnarounds, commissioning, and start-up phases; perform site acceptance testing and commissioning of control systems.
Ensure changes follow Westlake’s Management of Change (MOC) processes and maintain comprehensive documentation (PID loop tuning logs, APC design and implementation documentation, APC change logs, etc.).
Provide training and coaching to operators and process engineers on APC system usage and best practices.
Facilitate adoption and effective use of APC solutions; report usage and performance against defined KPIs.
Experienced in collaborating and communicating with a variety of stakeholders of multi-disciplines, including company/plant management team, process/production team, operation team, control team, company IT/OT team, etc., during the entire lifecycle of an APC project.
Organize and/or participate in various activities to develop Westlake’s APC program, including providing training and coaching to fellow APC engineers with less experience, sharing lessons learned and best practices in company’s APC network, developing & defining companywide standards or guidelines for APC project implementation and maintenance process, etc.
Participate in DCS/PLC software and hardware upgrades, alarm rationalization, and technical assurance reviews.
Work closely with plant operations and engineering to identify and implement process control improvements.
Collaborate with OT/IT and Data Science teams to define and execute real-time data strategies and architectures for process automation and analytics.
Contribute to the development of technology roadmaps and capital plans for process-automation, control, and optimization.
Support standardization and harmonization of APC practices, specifications, and KPIs across Westlake’s global PEM sites.

Minimum 10 years of hands-on experience in identifying, designing, implementing, tuning, and sustaining AspenTech APC (DMC3/DMCplus/IQ) applications in refinery, chemical, or petrochemical plants; experiences of other APC platforms, such as Honeywell’s Profit Suite/Forge APC platform, and Rockwell Automation’s Pavilion8 MPC platform will also be beneficial
Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Chemical Engineering (or related field).
Proven expertise in multivariable control and process optimization; experience in steady-state and dynamic process modeling is a plus.
Strong working knowledge of process flowsheets, P&IDs, and control logic diagrams.
Demonstrated capability on learning new processes and data analysis.
Demonstrated ability to lead APC projects from design through commissioning and sustainment.
Experience with plant data historians (OSIsoft PI, InfoPlus.21, etc.), PIMS, and integration with OT/IT systems.
Excellent troubleshooting, problem-solving, and analytical skills.
Effective oral and written communication skills; ability to work collaboratively across diverse teams and locations.
Strong planning and organizational skills; able to manage multiple priorities and develop support roadmaps.

Experience with additional APC/optimization/modeling platforms (e.g., Aspen Watch, Aspen IQ, SPYRO, ProMV, etc.).
Experience in training and mentoring plant personnel on APC and process automation topics.
Experience in coaching APC engineers with less experience, as well as developing central APC program.
Working knowledge of industry standards in industrial automation, and project management.

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