IT/OT Senior Systems Engineer

Biourja Renewables LLC•Houston, TX

17h

About The Position

BioUrja Renewables, LLC is a manufacturer of industrial-, beverage-, and fuel-grade ethanol and co-products, operating a 135-million-gallon-per-year production plant in Peoria, Illinois. It is part of BioUrja Group, a family-owned energy and agricultural trading, supply, and distribution group headquartered in Houston, Texas, with operations in the United States and several other countries. The IT/OT Senior Systems Engineer is the senior technical resource for IT and Operational Technology infrastructure across BioUrja Renewables’ manufacturing facilities. Based in Houston, the position is primarily responsible for Peoria and also supports North Texas operations. Reporting to the BioUrja Advisors Americas Team Lead, the role is dedicated to plant IT and OT operations and ensures the design, implementation, reliability, security, and supportability of infrastructure serving 24x7 production environments. The engineer provides hands-on systems engineering and administration, leads infrastructure projects, and directly supervises assigned plant IT support personnel. The role prioritizes work, coaches and develops staff, monitors ticket quality and service objectives, and acts as the escalation point for complex and high-severity issues. It owns technical and service problems through resolution and root-cause analysis, maintains documentation, and coordinates internal, vendor, and remote resources. The position also contributes to IT/OT standards, security practices, incident response, disaster recovery, and business continuity. Domestic travel may be up to 30%, including an anticipated one week per month at the Peoria facility during the initial transition period.

Requirements

Five or more years of experience in systems administration or systems engineering.
Experience supporting industrial, manufacturing, or OT environments is required.
Experience supporting industrial networking environments, including managed switches, VLANs, firewalls, industrial Ethernet, IT/OT network segmentation, and secure remote access to manufacturing systems.
Associate’s degree and/or seven years of work experience in a related field.
Demonstrated ability to lead, coach, and hold team members accountable while remaining hands-on.
Excellent organizational and planning skills.
Strong communication and interpersonal abilities.
Treat others with respect and value, using diplomacy and tact.
Ability to listen, build rapport, and establish credibility as a business and IT partner.
Strong customer service orientation.
Ability to make sound, logical judgments under intense pressure.
Self-directed and self-regulated, with accountability for owned areas and responsibilities.
Ability to balance customer needs in a challenging setting with maintaining a stable, secure, changing IT environment.
Ability to translate and communicate technical information to non-technical audiences.
Strong incident and problem management skills, including identifying and escalating system issues.
Ability to manage high-severity issues and escalate appropriately.
Willingness to travel domestically up to 30%, including anticipated travel to Peoria during the initial transition period and travel to North Texas and other sites as operational needs dictate.

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with PLC, SCADA, DCS, or historian environments; programming experience is not required.
Prior experience supervising, leading, or mentoring technical support staff.
CCNA or better.
Security certifications such as Security+ or GICSP, or Microsoft certifications.

Responsibilities

Serve as the primary technical owner for plant IT/OT support, engineering, and day-to-day operations, representing site requirements in planning and decisions.
Collaborate with the Americas Team Lead, plant operations leadership, and IT peers to align technical decisions with IT and business strategies.
Develop, communicate, and maintain IT/OT policies, procedures, standards, and technical documentation across plant environments.
Monitor IT, IT/OT convergence, industrial cybersecurity practices, and technology trends; recommend improvements to reliability, security, and supportability.
Develop and maintain runbooks, procedures, and training plans for plant support roles.
Participate in and help coordinate the on-call rotation, serving as the escalation point for Tier 1 on-call.
Directly supervise assigned plant IT support personnel, including prioritization, performance management, training, and technical development; monitor ticket queues and SLOs.
Provide technical guidance and take ownership of complex or high-severity escalations from Tier 1.
Coach and mentor Tier 1 personnel, identify skills gaps, and develop training plans.
Review ticket quality, documentation, and process adherence; provide feedback and conduct performance reviews.
Partner with plant operations leadership to set support priorities and communicate issue and project status.
Design, install, configure, test, maintain, monitor, and troubleshoot network infrastructure, Windows servers, and supporting software across IT and OT environments.
Manage security solutions, including secure remote access, endpoint protection/anti-virus, and intrusion detection systems.
Design and manage wired and wireless networks, including segmentation between business and OT networks.
Manage phone system operations.
Own system backups and file/server recovery, including periodic restore testing.
Oversee end-user accounts, permissions, and access rights, with routine requests handled by Tier 1 staff.
Manage third-party support providers and equipment vendors for escalations, warranty matters, and project work.
Perform server and network security audits and drive remediation of findings.
Plan and lead infrastructure projects, upgrades, and lifecycle refreshes for plant systems across supported facilities.
Contribute to the design and implementation of security controls and practices protecting identities, company data, OT systems, brand image, personal information, and other sensitive information.
Help develop, maintain, and test disaster recovery and business continuity plans for IT Service Desk and OT environments.
Support incident response for security events affecting plant IT/OT systems.
Perform related duties consistent with the scope and intent of the position.