Renewables Planning & Optimization Engineer

Marathon Petroleum Corporation•Findlay, OH

About The Position

This position represents an exciting opportunity within the Renewables Planning & Optimization team and the greater Renewable Fuels Value Chain, offering exposure to an emerging and rapidly evolving segment of the energy value chain. The role provides economic, scheduling, and analytical support for the Dickinson Renewable Diesel facility, the Beatrice pretreatment facility, and the Martinez joint venture. Core responsibilities include routine forecasting duties, feedstock and product economics analysis, short‑term production planning and optimization, and daily tactical coordination with operating sites. The position requires regular communication with the Commercial Renewables Optimization team, broader commercial stakeholders, and local facility departments. Leveraging advanced modeling and scheduling tools, the successful candidate will translate analytical insights into actionable plans and provide guidance to operations teams to ensure alignment with both monthly and daily planning objectives.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Engineering required, Chemical Engineering preferred
Four (4) years relevant experience.
Technical Services or Economics & Planning experience preferred.
LP modeling and/or scheduling experience preferred.

Responsibilities

Develop weekly production forecasts for the Dickinson and Beatrice facilities.
Develop and communicate operating plans.
Coordinate facility operations and optimization strategies with corporate Commercial Renewables Optimization team members and other Commercial stakeholders.
Push refinery constraints and work with local team members to overcome obstacles.
Communicate daily constraints to the planning group to improve the overall planning process.
Support daily inventory management and work with the scheduling team to manage inventories and unit production rates.
Track and report events that lead to lost opportunities
Present economic drivers and refinery operating plans to refinery and Commercial Renewables leadership
Assist in the development, implementation, operation, and maintenance of various modeling, scheduling, and optimization tools and processes
Helps and improves the commercial decision-making processes across renewables operations (feedstock selection, product placement, supply chain optimization, market analysis).
Perform monthly backcasting analysis to compare plan versus actual performance, identify key drivers of deviations, validate forecast inputs, and generate actionable insights to improve model accuracy and value‑chain decision‑making.
Serve as the primary point of contact for feedstock product quality, coordinating testing needs, addressing quality issues, and ensuring timely communication with Operations, Tech Services, and Product Quality teams.
Lead out‑month modeling and forecasting by generating forward-looking scenarios, validating underlying assumptions, analyzing variances vs. prior submissions, and delivering actionable insights to support strategic planning and operational decision-making.
Manages the commercial aspects of regional refinery operations, including feedstock selection, product and intermediate placement, supply chain optimization, and market analysis.
Demonstrates an advanced understanding of refinery operations, economics, and market dynamics for multiple refineries.
Able to mentor junior engineers in planning and optimization strategies.
Leads collaboration meetings within the value chain to discuss both local and regional economic drivers.
Understands how regional plans for multiple refineries are developed, optimized, and executed for multiple refineries using linear programming simulation models.
Modifies production plans as needed to adjust to demand/margin changes.
Accurately changes modeling constraints to match real life refinery operating constraints.
Manages local refinery forecasting independently.
Leads end-to-end evaluation of buy-or-make cases, from data gathering to final recommendation.
Develops sophisticated economic models and sensitivity analyses to assess risk and uncertainty.
Collaborates with trading to align strategies and optimize outcomes.
Interfaces with refinery leadership to communicate recommendations and gain alignment.
Leads the development and execution of backcast models, considering factors such as production efficiency, cost drivers, and market conditions.
Conducts in-depth root cause analysis to identify factors influencing historical performance deviations.
Collaborates with operational teams to implement corrective actions and continuous improvement initiatives.
Manages project support cases independently.
Possesses a deep understanding of refinery processes and commercial implications.
Capable of analyzing complex data, identifying trends, and proposing solutions autonomously.
Understands local refinery deliverables and can effectively manage independently.
Is trained on some refinery scheduling desks, uses APS to coordinate local refinery material balances and optimizes to improve refinery operating plans.
Actively pushing execution of operating strategies to ensure compliance with monthly operating plans and changing economics.