R&D Chemical Process Engineer

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Founded in 1920, Eastman is a global specialty materials company that produces a broad range of products found in items people use every day. With the purpose of enhancing the quality of life in a material way, Eastman works with customers to deliver innovative products and solutions while maintaining a commitment to safety and sustainability. The company’s innovation-driven growth model takes advantage of world-class technology platforms, deep customer engagement, and differentiated application development to grow its leading positions in attractive end markets such as transportation, building and construction, and consumables.

As a globally inclusive company, Eastman employs approximately 13,000 people around the world and serves customers in more than 100 countries. The company had 2025 revenue of approximately $8.8 billion and is headquartered in Kingsport, Tennessee, USA. For more information,  .

This position requires a systems thinker with strong engineering, manufacturing, and project leadership capabilities. The professional will be responsible for developing and executing scale-up strategies that enable successful implementation of new products, process technologies, and manufacturing opportunities across Eastman businesses.

The R&D Chemical Process Engineer serves as a technical and execution leader responsible for integrating activities across product development, manufacturing, engineering, quality, supply chain, procurement, and internal or external manufacturing partners to support successful scale-up and implementation efforts. Projects may vary in scope from incremental process improvements to new products, manufacturing technologies, asset expansions, and toll manufacturing opportunities.

The individual will provide leadership in manufacturing readiness, technology transfer, trial execution, implementation planning, and tolling readiness while helping strengthen Eastman s overall scale-up capability. The role is expected to influence decisions across organizational boundaries and serve as a trusted resource for scale-up strategy and execution without direct authority over project team members.

This position is located on-site at our Kingsport, TN headquarters.

• Ensure safety, environmental, quality, regulatory, and operational considerations are incorporated into scale-up planning.
• Develop both internal and external toll manufacturing readiness and scale-up plans for new products, technologies, and manufacturing opportunities by applying engineering fundamentals and practical manufacturing knowledge and maintaining integrates scale-up plans, critical paths, readiness assessments, and implementation timelines.
• Assess manufacturing readiness and execution risks with scaling up products and technologies by identifying technical, operational, supply chain, quality, and organizational risks and gaps that could impact successful implementation.
• Develop mitigation strategies and drive resolution of barriers to implementation.
• Lead technology transfer efforts between laboratory, pilot, demonstration, tollers, and commercial manufacturing environments.
• Build and maintain effective working relationships with internal stakeholders, tollers, suppliers, and external manufacturing partners.
• Coordinate and support cross-functional resources and activities required for successful trial, qualification, startup, or manufacturing readiness execution.
• Lead planning and execution of laboratory, pilot, demonstration, manufacturing, and qualification trials supporting scale-up objectives by defining trial objectives, success criteria, decision frameworks, and data collection requirements.
• Capture and communicate key learnings throughout the scale-up process to improve future implementation efforts.
• Develop recommendations that enable effective decision-making under uncertainty while balancing technical rigor, practicality, cost, schedule, and risk.
• Communicate project status, risks, key decisions, and recommendations to leadership and project teams.
• Contribute to the development and deployment of scale-up best practices, readiness…