Hydraulic Engineer; in Class Manufacturing Facility

Company Overview

Our manufacturing facility represents the gold standard in heavy-industry engineering, operational excellence, and precision manufacturing. Equipped with state-of-the-art automation, high-capacity forge units, modern casting plants, and an advanced captive heat treat infrastructure, we supply critical components to aerospace, defense, energy, infrastructure, and heavy machinery markets globally.

We are searching for an experienced, highly detail-oriented Full-Time Hydraulic Engineer to join our elite plant operations team. This role is pivotal in maintaining, advancing, and designing critical hydraulic actuators, power units, complex closed-loop manifolds, and automated continuous heat treat systems. If you thrive in a high-consequence, heavy industrial environment where precision fluid power and metallurgy intersect, this position is designed for you.

As our Hydraulic Engineer, you will serve as the premier subject matter expert (SME) for all high-pressure fluid power, fluid conveyance, electro-hydraulic systems, and specialized heat treat hydraulic mechanics across the facility. You will design, model, simulate, and commission heavy hydraulic circuits while working directly with process metallurgy, controls, and maintenance departments.

Your primary goal will be to design resilient hydraulic systems that withstand intense thermal cycles, severe pressure spikes, and continuous operational strain without losing micron-level accuracy. You will lead schematic development from scratch, specify specialized components, optimize quench-press hydraulics, and modernize existing infrastructure to drive world-class plant reliability.

• Design custom high-pressure industrial hydraulic systems, including Hydraulic Power Units (HPUs), custom valve manifolds, directional control blocks, proportional and servo valve arrays, accumulators, and cylinder assemblies.
• Perform rigorous engineering calculations for fluid dynamics, flow velocity, Reynolds numbers, pressure drop, thermal expansion, system heat dissipation, pipe stress, and pump displacements.
• Select optimal pumps (variable displacement piston, vane, gear), motors, high-pressure filtration systems, coolers, fluid reservoirs, and precision instrumentation (LVDTs, pressure transducers, flowmeters).
• Design electro-hydraulic circuits operating seamlessly with PLCs and automation platforms to support tight-tolerance positioning, continuous motion control, and high-force applications.

• Oversee, design, and optimize hydraulic subsystems embedded within industrial heat treat environments, including continuous roller hearth furnaces, batch drop-bottom furnaces, quench presses, car-bottom systems, and automated load/unload transfer mechanisms.
• Engineer fluid power systems that operate reliably in ambient and radiated temperatures up to 2,000°F (1,100°C), applying specialized high-temperature seal chemistries (FFKM, Viton, PTFE), fire-resistant hydraulic fluids (water-glycol HFC, synthetic polyol esters HFD-U), and thermal shielding.
• Develop fast-acting hydraulic quench actuation circuits capable of moving structural parts into quench mediums within sub-second reaction windows to achieve precise metallurgical grain structures and hardness profiles.
• Perform failure analysis on hydraulic components exposed to extreme thermal cycling, decarburization environments, and quench oil contamination; modify system geometries and filtration regimes to eradicate recurring failures.

• Author, review, and maintain standardized, complex…