Reliability Engineer

NAES•The Woodlands, TX

17d•$137,500 - $158,100

About The Position

The Fleet Reliability Engineer is a fleet-level technical leader responsible for improving equipment reliability, production assurance, and risk performance across a mixed generation portfolio. Reporting to the Fleet Director of Risk and Reliability, the role is a principal technical contributor to the Company's High Reliability Program (HRP) and Production Assurance / Dynamic Risk & Reliability framework. The engineer integrates reliability engineering, asset management, condition monitoring, maintenance strategy, root cause analysis, risk management, and data analytics to identify emerging threats, reduce repeat failures, improve equipment health, and protect generation capability. The role uses data, field observations, engineering judgment, and structured reliability methods to challenge ineffective strategies and drive measurable, sustainable improvement. The position works closely with fleet and plant leadership, operations, maintenance, engineering, outage management, project engineering, Supply Chain, warehouse and strategic spares teams, vendors and technical specialists, and data, digital, and software teams. The role influences technical and business decisions across organizational functions without relying on direct reporting authority. Normal hours are 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. Extended hours may be required for specific projects, and travel up to 25% is required. Work takes place at an established industrial site, where protective clothing and equipment are required and provided by NAES. Facilities may have industrial hazards, high noise, and construction activity; mobility around stairways, ladders, grating, and uneven terrain is essential, as is the ability to see, hear, read, and react to warnings, lights, and alarms. Employees participate in a Fitness for Duty Program, including a post-offer physical examination and drug screening and post-employment random drug screening. Smoking restrictions apply in and around the facility.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical, Electrical, Chemical, Industrial, Reliability, or a related engineering discipline from an accredited college or university recognized by the United States Department of Education, or equivalent; relevant work experience may substitute for education on a year-for-year basis.
Seven years of progressively responsible power-generation or heavy-industrial experience.
Three years of direct involvement in reliability engineering, maintenance engineering, equipment/system engineering, asset management, or closely related work.
Experience with rotating and stationary equipment, electrical systems, instrumentation and controls, balance-of-plant systems, and/or generation process systems sufficient to perform fleet-level reliability analysis.
Experience applying structured problem-solving, root cause analysis, failure analysis, equipment criticality, maintenance strategy optimization, and condition-monitoring principles.
Knowledge of CMMS/EAM platforms such as IBM Maximo, SAP, or equivalent systems; process/data historians such as AVEVA PI System or equivalent; Power BI or comparable business-intelligence and visualization tools; reliability, asset-health, risk-registry, RCA, and condition-monitoring software; and advanced Microsoft Excel.
Strong written, verbal, facilitation, presentation, and technical documentation skills.
Ability to interpret equipment history, work orders, inspection findings, process and historian trends, event data, and technical documentation.
Ability to influence technical and business decisions across functions and organizational levels.
Ability to integrate information from work management, condition monitoring, operations, engineering, and event-management systems into a coherent equipment-risk picture.
Ability to travel up to 25%.
Ability to work safely in an industrial site environment and meet the physical mobility and sensory requirements described in the posting.
Ability to coordinate with vendors when required, including reviewing technical proposals and supporting scope execution.

Nice To Haves

Formal RCA facilitator training and experience leading complex equipment or production-loss investigations.
Experience with multiple generating technologies in a mixed fleet, such as combined-cycle, simple-cycle combustion turbine, steam turbine, reciprocating engine, conventional thermal, hydro, or renewable generation.
Experience with fleet-level governance, reliability maturity assessments, asset-health programs, risk registers, production assurance, or dynamic reliability systems.
CMRP, CRE, or PE certification.
Category I, II, or III vibration certification, or certification in infrared thermography, lubrication analysis, ultrasound, motor testing, or other predictive-maintenance disciplines.

Responsibilities

Support and continuously improve the fleet High Reliability Program, including its standards, assessments, governance routines, reliability reviews, performance metrics, and site implementation expectations.
Maintain and advance a current view of reliability and production risks, including identifying and ranking threats, planning mitigations, assigning owners and due dates, tracking residual risk, and assessing potential production-loss exposure.
Develop and maintain risk-based equipment and system criticality rankings that reflect safety, environmental, production, financial, redundancy, and repair-duration consequences.
Evaluate preventive and predictive maintenance strategies using failure history, equipment criticality, condition information, OEM guidance, operating context, PM effectiveness, and failure-mode analysis; recommend justified task or strategy changes.
Provide technical oversight for condition-monitoring and predictive-maintenance technologies, including vibration analysis, lubrication and oil analysis, infrared thermography, ultrasound, motor and electrical testing, and performance monitoring; ensure findings lead to timely, risk-informed action.
Identify repetitive, high-cost, high-risk, and high-production-impact equipment and systems; lead structured bad-actor reviews and ensure corrective plans address underlying failure mechanisms.
Lead or facilitate root cause analysis, apparent-cause reviews, causal learning, failure reviews, and event investigations; ensure actions are technically sound, risk-prioritized, assigned, tracked, and verified for effectiveness.
Develop, standardize, and monitor fleet equipment-health indicators, thresholds, scorecards, and exception reports; escalate adverse trends before functional failure or forced production loss.
Participate in and lead fleet and site risk reviews, integrating equipment condition, work backlog, engineering issues, temporary configurations, operating constraints, and deferred maintenance into a risk picture.
Support repair-versus-replace decisions, obsolescence management, end-of-life planning, spares strategy, capital prioritization, and long-term asset-health decisions using risk and life-cycle value.
Analyze forced outages, derates, start failures, trips, and significant equipment events to identify systemic drivers and fleetwide corrective opportunities.
Use CMMS/EAM, historian, BI, and reliability-software data to identify patterns, validate hypotheses, prioritize work, and measure results; help define requirements for dynamic reliability and production-assurance software capabilities.
Develop and maintain fleet reliability standards, playbooks, templates, technical guidance, lessons learned, and repeatable analytical methods; promote replication of successful solutions across sites.
Build alignment with plant leaders and functional organizations, communicate risk in business terms, and influence timely decisions without direct reporting authority.
Benchmark reliability performance, identify maturity gaps, and lead initiatives that strengthen preventive, predictive, proactive, and precision-maintenance practices.
Coordinate with vendors when required, including reviewing technical proposals and supporting scope execution.