Senior Reliability Engineer

Position Overview

Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) provides affordable, reliable, and environmentally responsible energy to the communities we serve. As a publicly owned utility, OPPD is committed to operational excellence, innovation, and long-term asset reliability.

The Senior Reliability Engineer will centralize efforts related to equipment reliability by improving maintenance strategies, creating standard work packets, developing or refining preventive maintenance (PM) standards, and ensuring sites maintain appropriate critical spares. This role strengthens fleet performance by systematically prioritizing assets, analyzing failure modes and historical data, building and evaluating reliability KPIs and statistical models, leading root cause investigations, identifying design and commissioning weaknesses, monitoring operational practices, optimizing maintenance strategies and work order quality, and auditing PM/CBM tasks for effectiveness.

This position will manage fleet reliability growth by developing optimized maintenance strategies, implementing corrective actions from causal analyses, directing updates to engineering standards and operating procedures, overseeing improvements with maintenance and operations teams, leading strategic shifts after major failures, supporting spare-parts justification, expanding condition monitoring programs, embedding reliability principles in capital projects, supporting training for operators and technicians, tracking reliability initiatives, and managing risk through structured risk registers or risk-based maintenance frameworks.

You will also influence organizational change by coaching teams, promoting high-reliability behaviors, empowering sound decision-making, fostering a disciplined questioning attitude, teaching system-thinking, modeling accountable leadership, and reinforcing processes and procedures so they become sustainable daily habits that drive long-term reliability improvements.

• Drive enterprise Operational Excellence by guiding implementation of OPPD's Equipment Reliability and Asset Management roadmap
• Lead complex engineering evaluations, diagnosing issues and developing technical solutions
• Oversee engineering work streams across multiple disciplines to ensure integration and quality
• Advance organizational capability by developing new tools, methodologies, and technical approaches
• Champion risk identification and mitigation to reduce operational, safety, and reliability risks
• Manage fleet reliability initiatives that influence maintenance strategy, system performance, and risk-based decision making
• Lead reliability risk interpretation and communicate system behaviors, failure modes, and performance issues
• Develop high-reliability culture by coaching, mentoring, and strengthening operational judgment across teams

• Ability to successfully perform essential reliability engineering duties
• Registration as a Professional Engineer (PE) in Nebraska, or eligibility for reciprocity within 6 months
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex engineering tasks, analyses, and long-term solutions
• Experience managing engineering project components and multi-disciplinary collaboration
• Ability to develop and refine engineering standards, procedures, and best practices
• Strong judgment in identifying technical risks and implementing mitigation strategies
• Demonstrated ability to coach, mentor, and develop less-experienced engineers

• Reliability engineering, RCM, condition monitoring, or asset management background
• Experience leading causal analyses or root cause investigations
• Statistical modeling, KPI analysis, or reliability analytics
• Experience with CMMS systems or work order quality initiatives
• Industrial or power-generation experience
• Experience driving cultural change, operational discipline, and reliability-focused behaviors

This role is considered a non-essential role, however, this role may be required to report to work to support the restoration of normal business operations.

This position must be available for overtime work and callouts as required to ensure continuance of efficient operation.

Office:
Work will be performed in a modern office environment amid normal conditions of dust, odors, fumes, and noises.

Field:
Work will be performed outside in a wide variety of weather conditions (snow, rain, heat, cold, wind, etc.), terrain, and other natural environmental hazards as well as pollen and other airborne allergens.

Generation Plant:
Work will be performed inside with exposure to industrial building conditions and will be exposed to extreme temperatures, odors, dust, gases, poor ventilation and exposure to sounds. Noise levels may require shouting to be heard.

Work Environment:
Work will be performed in high traffic environments.

Will work around energies high voltage electrical equipment.

Will work in construction areas that present many physical hazards.

Will work at heights.

Will work in…