Value Chain Innovation Advisor

Marathon Petroleum Corporation•Findlay, OH

2d•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 data and reducing barriers to timely, actionable insight. This role balances both technical execution and project management: designing and executing pilots and proof‑of‑concepts; and evaluates technical feasibility, scalability, and business value. Working closely with planning teams, digital and data partners, IT, Operations Research, and external vendors, this role enables disciplined experimentation and accelerates learning. This position owns the structured transition of successful pilots into formal program initiatives, ensuring adoption and execution of the production solutions. This role requires exceptional communication skills, creative problem-solving abilities, and relationship-building expertise. In support of key VCO transformation priorities, this role will lead or coordinate initiatives and cross‑functional projects, providing structured planning, execution oversight, and integration with the broader portfolio.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree required.
Eight (8) years of experience required; including four (4) years of experience in optimization, advanced analytics, digital transformation, or innovation‑focused engineering roles.
Innovation & Experimentation Execution – Ability to explore, prototype, and test new concepts in ambiguous environments while driving structured experimentation and learning.
Project & Initiative Management – Ability to plan, coordinate, and manage innovation initiatives, pilots, and proofs‑of‑concept from concept through completion.
Advanced Analytics & Optimization Background – Solid grounding in optimization, modeling, analytics, or decision‑support methods, with openness to emerging and non‑traditional approaches.
Stakeholder Influence & Collaboration – Effective at engaging planning, digital, technical, and external partners, synthesizing input, and advancing ideas without direct authority.

Nice To Haves

Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Operations Research, or Data Science preferred.
Experience in Economics & Planning including working with LP models (PIMS).
Creative problem-solving and innovation with new tools, techniques, and approaches to enhance insight accessibility and adoption.
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.
Experience with data analysis efforts: identifying data sources, querying data, performing exploratory data analysis/modeling, presenting historical insights/business justification, and affecting data-driven business changes.

Responsibilities

Manages project execution from idea intake and prioritization through pilot execution, evaluation, solution deployment, and business adoption.
Designs and executes pilots, prototypes, and proof‑of‑concept initiatives to test new tools and approaches.
Engages planning teams, digital/data groups, IT, vendors, and external partners to source ideas, secure technical resources, and co-develop pilot solutions.
Evaluates technical feasibility, scalability, and business value of initiatives to inform progression or retirement decisions.
Establishes structured processes for transitioning successful solutions into standardized tools, processes, or production systems.
Continuously improves innovation methods, tools, and ways of working to increase experimentation speed, learning quality, and impact.
Acquires, validates, and transforms data from approved source systems to create reliable datasets for analytics and reporting; document assumptions and refresh logic.
Performs descriptive and diagnostic analysis to explain KPI movement, identifies drivers, and surfaces exceptions that should be highlighted in dashboards and recurring reporting.
Acts as a bridge between technical teams and business stakeholders to ensure solutions meet decision needs.