Process Development Engineer

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.

This posting is for a Process Development Engineer in the Performance Films Technology Organization at Eastman Chemical Company located in Martinsville, VA. Individual will be primarily supporting automotive and architectural markets for Window Films and Paint Protection Films. The position will have responsibility as a liaison between R&D and manufacturing with a focus on process development, successful scale‑up of new products adhering, sustaining Technology‑Manufacturing Readiness protocol, and scouting new process innovation for Raw materials and Film converting technologies including Coating/Lamination and Winding/Slitting R2R processes.

Candidate must be flexible, proactive, and professional with experience in scale‑up and process development applications such as coatings, pressure sensitive adhesive formulations, radiation cured polymeric coatings, and web handling. Candidate should be able to communicate effectively and function in an innovative, fast‑paced, multidisciplinary team environment.

• Actively participate in full compliance with the site’s Zero Incident Mindset Safety programs.
• Identify safety concerns and implement countermeasures to correct potential safety issues via engineering and administrative solutions.
• Champion process capabilities and leverage technology boundaries to apply and help project execution.
• Identify areas of improvement on the manufacturing floor and collaborate with R&D scientists and manufacturing engineers to provide solutions with direct impact in quality and cost.
• Scout external vendors and technologies and present recommendations for new technologies implementation to management. Develop capital projects proposals (includes developing scope, conducting project safety reviews, and generating estimates).
• Building out modeling/theory and applying it going forward with final products.
• Participate in the improvement of operating and management of change process (MOC).
• Interface with Project managers and teams to clearly understand the needs to advance the project and meet the deliverables in Technology‑Manufacturing Readiness Level and interpret into the trial plans by partnering with operations and other functional teams.
• Interface with the Quality and Manufacturing Departments to identify actions for quality improvement and implement root‑cause analysis, statistical process control (SPC) and other quality and manufacturing initiatives.
• Communicate results, conclusions, and recommendations to internal and external audiences. Keeping others informed of your work (Project Reviews, etc.).
• Document work with clear, concise via technical reports and complete in a timely fashion.
• Develop strategies and lead teams to obtain the information necessary to successfully scale up new products and processes to commercial scale, either in existing assets or new design and build.
• Provide representation to select business area(s) for Scale‑up and Process Innovation, understanding business and market needs regarding growth, new commercialization, scale‑up capabilities, and needed process technology improvements.
• Provide technical and business assessments to guide management through decisions and choices in development and scale‑up of new products/processes.
• Provide scale‑up project…