Senior Plant Engineer

Company Description

LSC Environmental Products, LLC is a global manufacturer of products and equipment that address environmental challenges such as erosion, odor control, land reclamation, waste cover, seeding, and dust management. For more than 25 years, LSC has pioneered spray-applied alternate daily cover and solar-powered vent flares in the solid waste industry, and has since expanded its coatings technology into new products, industries, and markets.

Located in rural New York between the birthplace of IBM and Cornell University, the company benefits from a strong regional base of technical talent. LSC focuses on creating innovative solutions that provide superior performance, lower total system costs, and reliable customer service for its partners. Team members join a mission-driven organization dedicated to practical, high-impact environmental solutions.

The Senior Plant Engineer is the Lenoir site's technical lead for process capability, pneumatic conveying, controls strategy, and engineered improvement. The role turns recurring operating problems into defined technical causes and durable solutions. Working primarily on the manufacturing floor, this engineer establishes process limits, improves throughput, yield, quality, and stability, leads technical changes and capital projects, and builds the data and documentation needed to sustain results.

Operations owns daily production execution and Maintenance owns equipment care and repair. The Senior Plant Engineer owns the engineering analysis, process standards, and technical roadmap that improve what the plant can reliably deliver. This role requires a strong mechanical and process-engineering foundation, with particular depth in pneumatic conveying and bulk-material flow.

• Establish and maintain baseline capability, constraints, and operating windows for the plant's major process systems.
• Lead structured problem solving and root cause investigations; validate improvements through controlled trials and data.
• Optimize pneumatic conveying and material flow, including airflow balance, pressure relationships, separation efficiency, plugging prevention, and reliable feed through the plant. Improve moisture and water balance, drying, refining, dosing, baling, and pelleting processes as applicable.
• Define critical process parameters, setpoints, control limits, and technical acceptance criteria.
• Partner with Operations to translate engineering findings into operating standards, training, and daily process control.

Own the site control philosophy and measurement strategy for PLC, HMI, VFD, instrumentation, and process data systems.

• Troubleshoot controls and instrumentation at a working technical level and direct integrators for larger or specialized changes.
• Improve sensor coverage, calibration, alarming, interlocks, and reliable data capture where process visibility is insufficient.
• Build useful trending for throughput, moisture, motor load, downtime, and other critical variables so decisions rest on evidence.
• Lead the design, development, and implementation of a site-wide SCADA system, including system architecture, PLC and instrumentation integration, data acquisition, historian capabilities, operator visualization, alarming, and performance reporting.

Develop project scopes, technical specifications, budgets, schedules, and engineering justifications.

• Evaluate and manage equipment suppliers, contractors, controls integrators, fabricators, and outside engineering firms.
• Lead technical execution from design and installation through commissioning, startup, performance validation, and turnover; maintain engineering change control and updated technical documentation.
• Hold suppliers accountable to design and performance commitments using defined acceptance criteria.

Partner with Maintenance to distinguish process, controls, and mechanical causes of loss and convert findings into PM, spares, inspections, standard work, or design changes.

• Evaluate process and equipment changes for combustible dust, deflagration, machine guarding, LOTO, and other applicable safety risks.
• Support dust collection, spark detection, and suppression systems and the applicable NFPA combustible-dust standards.
• Maintain process flow diagrams, control narratives, equipment specifications, setpoint sheets, and operating standards.
• Train and coach operators, team leads, and maintenance technicians so improvements remain effective after implementation.

• Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, or Paper Science & Engineering required; master's degree in engineering preferred.
• 10+ years of hands-on process or plant engineering experience in a continuous, semi-continuous, or bulk-material production environment.
• Demonstrated ability to diagnose integrated process systems using field…