Electrical Engineer

Mitsubishi Performance Polymers Division; Chesapeake (VA); On-site; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

MCA - Alpolic seeks an Electrical Engineer to provide plant-level engineering for electrical power, controls, automation, and equipment reliability in a continuous manufacturing setting. You will partner with engineering, maintenance, production, HSE, IT, vendors, and contractors to troubleshoot chronic failures, design upgrades, improve equipment availability, and document systems to company standards.

The role blends hands-on field support with disciplined engineering analysis, project

Qualifications

• Experience designing and supporting electrical power and control systems in a continuous manufacturing environment.
• Familiarity with PLCs/PLCs platforms (Allen-Bradley, Siemens, Mitsubishi) and motor-control equipment.
• Ability to troubleshoot failures, implement upgrades, and document systems per standards.

Responsibilities

• Design, specify, modify, and support electrical and control systems across power distribution, drives, instrumentation, and networks.
• Lead or support project execution from concept through startup including commissioning and turnover to operations.
• Coordinate with maintenance, production, IT, and vendors to ensure safe, reliable equipment and adherence to safety practices.

Skills

Electrical power systems

PLC programming

SCADA

Maintenance troubleshooting

Tools

AB PLC

Siemens PLC

Mitsubishi PLC

HMI/SCADA

Job description

Company:

MCA - Alpolic

Job Description:

The Electrical Engineer provides plant-level engineering for electrical power, controls, automation, and equipment-reliability needs in a continuous manufacturing environment. The role partners daily with Engineering, Maintenance, Production, HSE, Quality, Information Technology, vendors, and contractors to safely troubleshoot chronic failures; design and execute upgrades; improve equipment availability; and ensure electrical and controls systems are documented, maintainable, secure, and aligned with company standards. The position combines hands-on field support with disciplined engineering analysis, project execution, commissioning, and technical stewardship of production assets and facility systems.

Electrical, Controls, and Automation Engineering

Design, specify, modify, and support industrial electrical and control systems, including power distribution, motor-control equipment, PLCs, HMIs, variable-frequency and DC drives, instrumentation, sensors, industrial networks, and machine-safety interfaces.

Develop control narratives, functional requirements, I/O lists, panel layouts, schematics, network architecture, bills of material, and installation work packages appropriate to project scope.

Program, configure, troubleshoot, and improve Allen-Bradley, Mitsubishi, and Siemens PLC/HMI platforms and associated drive systems. Support legacy systems while developing practical migration and obsolescence plans.

Support SCADA and operational-technology systems, including Ignition integration, historian/data requirements, Ethernet/IP communications, managed switches, device addressing, time synchronization, and coordination across IT/OT boundaries.

Perform disciplined diagnostics using electrical drawings, PLC logic, trend data, drive fault history, network diagnostics, and field measurements. Change one variable at a time when practicable and preserve rollback capability.

Maintain validated backups of PLC, HMI, drive, SCADA, and network configurations. Control access and changes in accordance with company requirements.

Reliability and Maintenance Support

Partner with electricians, mechanics, planners, and production personnel to troubleshoot breakdowns, analyse equipment and component failures, and restore equipment safely and efficiently.

Lead or support root-cause investigations for recurring electrical, controls, communication, and process-equipment failures.

Translate findings into prioritised corrective actions with defined owners and verification of effectiveness.

Improve preventive and predictive maintenance tasks for electrical assets, controls hardware, motors, drives, panels, field devices, and network infrastructure. Recommend condition-monitoring methods and replacement intervals based on risk and failure history.

Review CMMS history, downtime data, alarms, work orders, and spare-parts usage to identify reliability opportunities and bad actors.

Develop critical-spare recommendations and technical specifications; support vendor selection, repair-versus-replace decisions, and lifecycle planning for obsolete or unsupported equipment.

Provide technical escalation support during significant equipment events and participate in the on-call rotation or planned weekend work after appropriate orientation and training.

Projects, Installation, and Commissioning

Develop project scopes, alternatives, estimates, schedules, risk assessments, and technical justifications for capital and expense projects.

Lead or support equipment upgrades, installations, and modifications from concept through startup, including design reviews, procurement support, factory or site acceptance testing, commissioning, punch-list closure, and turnover to operations and maintenance.

Coordinate multidisciplinary work involving mechanical systems, process requirements, electrical installation, controls integration, networking, utilities, and production constraints.

Ensure projects include appropriate machine guarding, interlocks, alarms, maintainability, safe access, energy-isolation provisions, and required documentation before final acceptance.

Monitor project cost and schedule; review technical quotations, purchase requisitions, change orders, invoices, and contractor deliverables within assigned authority.

Plan cutovers and startups with clear prerequisites, contingency plans, backups, rollback points, communications, and post-startup monitoring.

Safety, Risk, and Compliance

Integrate safety into design and troubleshooting activities through hazard review, risk assessment, management of change, pre-startup review, safe-work planning, and verification of safeguards.

Follow and reinforce lockout/tagout, electrical safe-work practices, arc-flash requirements, energized-work restrictions, line-of-fire controls, PPE requirements, and machine-startup procedures.

Immediately escape any condition that may affect a safety function, required interlock, stabil