Planning & Optimization Engineer III​/Senior Planning & Optimization Engineer

Overview

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

Value Chain Optimization (VCO) is seeking a motivated employee with interest in commercial optimization and business transformation. In this role, you will collaborate with VCO leadership, Commercial IT, commercial business partners, Refining teams, and external consultants to deliver an integrated planning framework that maximizes enterprise value capture and ensures consistency across MPC’s asset footprint.

This role is accountable for end-to-end delivery of VCO transformation work streams, including standard work design, stakeholder alignment, change control, training/user adoption, and sustained implementation.

This position is open to all MPC locations that suit business needs.

• Enables and improves the commercial decision-making processes across regional refinery operations (feedstock selection, product/intermediate placement, supply chain optimization, market analysis) by driving standard work, governance, tool adoption, and cross-functional alignment without owning the daily planning decisions or plan outputs.
• Demonstrates an advanced understanding of refinery operations, economics, and market dynamics across multiple refineries, and mentors/enables teams on planning & optimization methods, value levers, and model-based thinking to support consistent, repeatable execution, focusing on capability building and transformation adoption rather than day-to-day plan ownership.
• Leads and facilitates value chain collaboration forums to align stakeholders on economic drivers, decision rights, standard KPIs, and execution cadence, and to surface/resolve cross-site dependencies, risks, and barriers impacting VCO transformation outcomes.
• Understands how regional plans are developed, optimized, and executed using linear programming (LP) models, and acts as the transformation liaison to ensure model/process changes are standardized, documented, tested, governed, deployed, and adopted. Partners with planning teams to translate operational realities into requirements, coordinate constraint/structure updates through defined governance, and validate that model/process changes align with real refinery and supply chain constraints.
• Has the capability of leading end-to-end evaluation of buy-or-make cases, from data gathering to final recommendation, as well as developing sophisticated economic models and sensitivity analyses to assess risk and uncertainty. Collaborates with Trading, Refining, and VCO leadership to capture identified value.
• Leads development and deployment of backcast/performance learning routines to identify drivers of deviations (production efficiency, cost drivers, market conditions), and converts insights into standardized improvements (data definitions, model/process updates, control plans, and continuous improvement actions). Partners with operational and planning teams to implement and sustain corrective actions through the VCO governance cadence.
• Manages VCO transformation projects/work streams independently (problem statements, hypothesis, data/insight, recommendation), applying deep understanding of refinery processes and commercial implications to remove barriers, standardize solutions, and accelerate adoption across refineries/value chains.
• Maintains working literacy of refinery scheduling concepts and APS capabilities to translate transformation requirements into scalable tools/process improvements; coordinates with scheduling/planning desks to standardize material balance methods, KPI definitions, exception management, and operating rhythms. Drives change management and user adoption so operating strategies are executed consistently.
• Owns end-to-end workstream delivery: builds and maintains the integrated project plan, milestones, dependency map, and delivery cadence; ensures alignment across Commercial IT, business partners, Refining, and external consultants.
• Leads stakeholder communications and reporting: prepares regular progress updates, decision memos, and…