Staff Lead Process Engineer

PBF Energy • Oregon, OH

1d • Onsite

About The Position

PBF Energy is seeking a Staff Lead Process Engineer for its Toledo Refinery in Oregon, Ohio. The role provides technical leadership to assigned refinery areas and directly supervises unit process engineers, ensuring they have the direction, resources, training, and support needed to serve refinery Business Teams. As a technical leader in the Technical Service organization, this engineer leads complex troubleshooting, multi-unit technical issues, process optimization, technical planning, and turnaround activities. The position is hands-on and requires taking ownership of challenging issues, organizing multidisciplinary teams, providing sound engineering direction, and driving problems to resolution.

The role provides day-to-day leadership, coaching, mentoring, and technical development for up to five Unit Process Engineers and up to two Co-op students. The Staff Lead Process Engineer also shares responsibility for managing the Toledo process engineering Co-op program, including assigning meaningful technical work, evaluating performance, and supporting recruitment and onboarding. Engineering leadership and technical support outside normal working hours may be required for refinery operations, significant events, or turnaround activities.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering from an accredited university.
• Minimum of 8 years of relevant refinery or oil and gas engineering experience; 10 years preferred.
• Demonstrated experience troubleshooting refinery process and operational issues.
• Demonstrated leadership and mentoring ability.
• Experience working across multiple refinery process units.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills, including the ability to interact effectively with Operations, Maintenance, Reliability, Business Teams, and other refinery functions.
• Ability to balance hands-on technical involvement with effective delegation and development of Unit Process Engineers.
• Ability to work effectively in a fast-paced refinery environment and respond to changing operational priorities.
• Strong commitment to safety, process safety, environmental compliance, and operational excellence.

Responsibilities

• Provide technical direction and support to assigned unit process engineers serving refinery Business Teams.
• Lead troubleshooting and provide technical support during unit upsets, outages, startups, shutdowns, and other abnormal operating conditions.
• Support process improvements, optimization opportunities, and implementation of best practices.
• Review and guide process engineering work, ensuring appropriate technical rigor in recommendations, calculations, studies, and projects.
• Set priorities with unit process engineers and review their progress, workload, and competing priorities.
• Maintain and effectively use unit monitoring, material balance, long-term monitoring, catalyst health, and other critical technical programs.
• Use knowledge of refinery operating constraints and business and economic information to support process optimization decisions.
• Review and approve appropriate process engineering calculations and documentation, including emissions and release calculations prepared by Unit Process Engineers.
• Understand refinery environmental requirements and support compliance with applicable limits.
• Participate in turnaround planning, scope development, execution, and post-turnaround follow-up.
• Provide technical leadership during turnaround preparation, startup, shutdown, equipment inspection, catalyst loading and unloading, and evaluation of as-found equipment conditions.
• Provide engineering leadership and technical support outside normal working hours when required by operations, significant events, or turnarounds.
• Cover assigned units and serve as a backup engineer when resources are unavailable.
• Directly supervise up to five Unit Process Engineers and up to two Co-op students.
• Coach, mentor, and develop assigned employees; establish expectations and priorities, and routinely review workload and performance.
• Help develop engineers for broader refinery leadership and technical roles.
• Share responsibility for management of the Toledo process engineering Co-op program.
• Develop and maintain meaningful technical assignments and priorities for Co-op students; provide coaching, feedback, and performance evaluations.
• Support recruitment, interviewing, selection, onboarding, and development of Co-op students.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior