Principal Pilot Plant Engineer

Skills at this level

Continuous/Integrated Pilot Plant Operation

— Operates continuous, integrated chemical process pilot plants — running batches, monitoring equipment, and maintaining operating discipline across coupled unit operations rather than isolated bench steps.

Batch Execution to SOP

— Runs pilot-scale batches to written batch instructions and standard operating procedures, weighing and charging ingredients accurately and documenting each step for reproducibility.

Process Safety & Life Critical Standards

— Applies Life Critical Standards, performs lock out/tag out, and enforces food/process safety compliance while operating pilot equipment, setting a role model for the plant's safety culture.

Equipment Maintenance & Reliability

— Performs and supervises routine maintenance of pilot plant, warehouse, and lab equipment, making expedited repairs to sustain the continuing efficient operation of the plant.

Root Cause Investigation & Upset Response

— Participates in root cause investigations and performs process upset/crisis response, diagnosing why a pilot run deviated and implementing corrective changes.

Procedure & SWP Authoring

— Creates and improves job procedures and writes safe work practices (SWPs) that codify how pilot processes are run and improved.

Lab-to-Pilot Scale-Up

— Leads scale-up of chemical processes from lab to pilot scale — process transfer, troubleshooting, and optimization — driving plant readiness for new product introductions under safety and quality requirements.

Scale-Up Risk Strategy

— Develops robust scale-up strategies using advanced modeling, pilot plant experimentation, and scaling data to reduce the technical risks required for successful commercialization.

Cross-Functional Commercialization

— Works across Sales, R&D, Purchasing, Production, and Quality to convert a small-scale pilot process into commercially viable production, including field support and training of plant operators.

Process Modeling (Mechanistic/Hybrid/Data-Driven)

— Develops, deploys, and scales mechanistic, hybrid, or data-driven models to support process design, scale-up, and performance, integrating them into plant systems to optimize operations.

Programming for Process Development

— Uses programming and data-science tools (Python, R, Julia) in a manufacturing and process-development context to analyze pilot data and build scale-up models.

Analytical Quality Testing

— Performs analytical testing during pilot runs to verify product quality and accuracy against specifications before scale-up decisions are made.