Value Chain Model & Optimization Advisor/Engineer

Marathon Petroleum Corporation•Findlay, OH

2d•Onsite

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 strong technical background? Do you like building tools and data pipelines that power complex business decisions? Marathon Petroleum Company LP (MPC) has an opening within the Value Chain Optimization organization on the Value Chain Insights team. Our mission is to power confident decisions across the value chain — building the trusted tools and data foundations that drive enterprise optimization and delivering the cutting-edge analytics and insights that increase 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 designing, building, and supporting enterprise optimization model case input tools that support Marathon's routine planning and optimization models across the value chain. Case input tools are applications that assemble, validate, and format the data required to run Marathon's Aspen PIMS and Aspen Petroleum Supply Chain Planner (PSCP) models for the full planning cycle, post-audits, and enterprise-wide optimization. This role requires expert-level Excel VBA development, strong SQL and data-pipeline skills, and a disciplined approach to building standardized, robust, low-maintenance solutions. Success depends on the ability to turn inconsistent or manual case-build processes into reliable, repeatable tooling; to partner closely with regional planning teams; and to bring engineering rigor, creative problem-solving, and attention to detail to every deliverable. This position has exposure and impact on other workstreams within the Model Interpretation team that include AI-assisted analytics and business intelligence platforms. 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. A Bachelor's degree in another field may be considered with five (5) years of planning, optimization, simulation, mathematical modeling, analytics, decision-support systems, or closely related experience required.
Four (4) years of experience working with planning, optimization, scheduling, analytics, operations research, or decision-support models and tools.

Nice To Haves

Expert-level skills in building complex, maintainable, automated tools for production business processes, demonstrated through Microsoft Excel and VBA or equivalent technologies (e.g., Python, SQL/database automation, or other scripting and application-development platforms).
Strong SQL skills, including writing and tuning queries against relational databases (e.g., SQL Server) to extract and shape large, multi-table datasets.
Hands-on data pipeline and ETL experience—sourcing, transforming, validating, and loading data from multiple enterprise systems into standardized formats.
Demonstrated ability to design standardized, robust, low-maintenance tooling and templates that are scalable and easy for non-technical users to operate.
Familiarity with linear programming, DPO, or refinery optimization models (e.g., Aspen PIMS, PIMS-AO, XPIMS, Aspen Petroleum Supply Chain Planner) and the data structures they require.
Exposure to refinery or value-chain planning processes such as near-term, short-term, mid-term, back casting, or cross-regional optimization.
Experience manipulating and analyzing complex, high-volume, high-dimensional data from varying sources.
Working knowledge of Power Query, Power BI, Python, or other data-transformation and automation tools.
Proven ability to think critically and solve problems given incomplete information and/or ambiguous requirements, delivering results at varying levels of precision.
Strong documentation habits and a collaborative approach to supporting business users.

Responsibilities

Demonstrates advanced expertise in enterprise optimization models and translates complex model structures, assumptions, and outputs into practical business guidance and scalable solutions.
Designs and delivers model-related capabilities, including analysis tools, standardized model components, documentation, and AI-assisted solutions that improve consistency, understanding, and adoption.
Independently analyzes model performance, sensitivities, assumptions, and exceptions across multiple assets, planning horizons, or functional areas, resolving complex and ambiguous issues.
Partners with modeling, planning, scheduling, and platform teams to validate assumptions, constraints, configurations, and outputs against operational realities while supporting model deployment, change events, and governance activities.
Leads development, harmonization, and sustainment of model standards, methodologies, definitions, and supporting capabilities to improve consistency, comparability, and scalability across the enterprise.
Establishes and maintains documentation, training materials, and support processes that enable consistent adoption and sustained capability utilization.
Serves as a trusted advisor between modeling teams, business users, and governance stakeholders, creating feedback mechanisms that continuously improve model quality, usability, and business value.
Leads projects and improvement initiatives with moderate complexity and resource requirements while mentoring less experienced team members.