Planning & Optimization III/Senior Engineer

Marathon Petroleum Corporation•Findlay, OH

23h•Hybrid

About The Position

An exciting career awaits you At MPC, we’re committed to being a great place to work – one that welcomes new ideas, encourages diverse perspectives, develops our people, and fosters a collaborative team environment. Position Summary Do you have a quantitative background? Do you like solving complex business problems through data? Marathon Petroleum Company LP (MPC) has an opening within the Value Chain Optimization organization on the Value Chain Insights team. Our mission is to deliver exceptional, cutting-edge analytics and meaningful insights that empower decision-makers by increasing trust and confidence in our reporting and reducing barriers to timely, actionable insight. This role sits in the Model Interpretation vertical and is an individual contributor responsible for interpreting, validating, and communicating outputs from Marathon’s enterprise optimization models across the value chain. This role requires exceptional communication skills, creative problem-solving abilities, and relationship-building expertise to make complex technical outputs accessible and actionable, including the responsible use of AI-assisted interpretation and summarization tools where appropriate. Success depends on the ability to build credibility as a trusted advisor, craft compelling narratives from data, and develop innovative approaches to interpretation challenges. This position belongs to a family of jobs with increasing responsibility, competency, and skill level. Actual position title and pay grade will be based on the selected candidate’s experience and qualifications.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Engineering required.
Four (4) years relevant experience required.
Technical Services or Economics & Planning experience preferred.
Experience working with LP models (PIMS), as well as Refining and Midstream operations preferred.
Experience interpreting LP/DPO or refinery models (e.g., PIMS, XPIMS, GAMS, AIMMS) and communicating model output to stakeholders.
Creative problem-solving and innovation with new tools, techniques, and approaches to enhance insight accessibility and adoption.
Experience connecting optimization model outputs to commercial strategy, pricing signals, and operational decision points.
Exposure to Power BI, data visualization, or AI-assisted analytics platforms, including practical use of copilots/assistants for summarization, reporting, and stakeholder communications.
Experience with manipulating and analyzing complex, high-volume, high-dimensional data from varying sources and communicating complex quantitative analysis in a clear, precise, and actionable manner.
Proven ability to think critically and solve problems, given incomplete information and/or ambiguous requirements.
A flexible analytic approach that provides results at varying levels of precision.
Action Planning - Establishing an action plan for self and others (if tasked) to complete work efficiently and on time by setting priorities and/or adjusting priorities when appropriate and identifying more/less critical activities/assignments, establishing timelines and milestones by allocating appropriate amounts of time for completing own and others' work and avoiding scheduling conflicts, and leveraging resources (individuals, processes, departments, and tools).
Coordinates with internal and external partners.
Uses time effectively and prevents irrelevant issues or distractions from interfering with work completion.
Establishes procedures to remain aware of issues, follow up on action items, and track results.
Adaptability - Maintaining effectiveness when experiencing major changes in work responsibilities or environment (e.g., people, processes, structure, or culture); adjusting effectively to change by exploring the benefits, trying new approaches, and collaborating with others to make the change successful.
Business Acumen - Applies knowledge of MPC’s business, industry and the marketplace to advance the organization’s goals.
Makes decisions and recommendations clearly linked to MPC’s strategy.
Communication - The ability to speak and write effectively, demonstrates fundamental command of language, communicates well using all mediums
Continuous Learning - The desire to constantly learn new skills and develop competencies that will improve performance and effectiveness.
Desire to build a deep understanding of one’s work, business, and role within the organization showing an inclination to seek information in order to fully understand a problem or project
Critical Thinking - Identifying and understanding issues, problems and opportunities; using data analysis to draw conclusions; using judgment in choosing a course of action; taking action that is consistent with available facts, constraints and probable consequences.
Intellectually curious
Decision Making - Ability to know when and what decisions should be made and to make several decisions simultaneously in a fast-paced, rapidly changing environment
Innovation - Creating novel solutions with measurable value for existing and potential customers (internal or external); experimenting with new ways to solve work problems and seize opportunities that result in unique and differentiated solutions
Problem Solving - Problem Solving is a step-by-step process of defining a problem, searching for information, and testing a series of solutions until the problem is solved. It involves critical thinking, analysis and persistence
Results Driven - Drives operational and process excellence and innovative behavior by empowering others, collaborating, taking appropriate risk, making timely decisions and holding people accountable for results.
Teamwork - The ability of team members to work well together in every situation and empathize with each other.
Teamwork skills consist of interrelated abilities that let you work effectively in an organized group.

Responsibilities

Translates complex optimization model outputs into clear, actionable guidance for planners, schedulers, and commercial teams.
Ensures consistency and accuracy in interpretation across PPIMS, XPIMS, DPO, and other optimization platforms, using defined interpretation standards and a common glossary.
Provide day-to-day decision support to business users, enabling timely understanding of model recommendations.
Partners with modeling teams to validate assumptions, highlight sensitivities, and align model results with operational realities.
Applies creative problem-solving to reconcile apparent conflicts between model outputs and business intuition, investigating root causes when standard interpretation approaches are insufficient.
Builds and maintains trusted relationships with planners, schedulers, commercial teams, and operations personnel, serving as a bridge between technical modeling teams and business users.
Proactively engages stakeholders to understand their decision contexts, sources of confusion, and skepticism regarding model outputs.
Facilitates dialogue that builds mutual understanding and model confidence, tailoring communication style and technical depth for audiences ranging from front-line users to executive decision-makers.
Partners with Regional VCO, Commercial, and Operations to integrate model insights into planning and execution cycles.
Establishes feedback loops with business users to continuously improve interpretation quality and relevance.
Coordinates with Analytics Support to ensure modeling outputs and decision-support tools evolve in tandem.