Senior Process Engineer
Location: Sterling, VA
About the Organization
Our client is a leading food manufacturing organization specializing in prepared and refrigerated foods, with a strong focus on quality, food safety, operational excellence, and innovative food-processing solutions. The organization operates sophisticated manufacturing facilities and is committed to maintaining high standards across engineering, automation, reliability, sanitation, and production operations.
The Sterling, Virginia facility operates within a highly regulated food manufacturing environment, where engineering teams support advanced processing, cooking, chilling, packaging, refrigeration, utilities, automation, and facility infrastructure.
Position Overview
We are seeking a Senior Process Engineer to provide strategic and hands-on engineering leadership across engineering, maintenance, reliability, automation, utilities, facilities, and capital projects within a food manufacturing environment.
The individual will work closely with Operations, Quality Assurance, Food Safety, Sanitation, Supply Chain, Finance, HR, Procurement, vendors, contractors, and regulatory/auditing partners to improve safety, quality, productivity, reliability, and overall plant performance.
Key Responsibilities
Develop and execute plant engineering strategies focused on safety, quality, food safety, throughput, labor efficiency, equipment uptime, sanitation, and cost performance.
Lead and support capital projects, including project scope development, budgeting, vendor selection, contractor management, installation, commissioning, startup, and validation.
Provide technical leadership for food-processing systems, cook tanks, chilling systems, vacuum packaging, boilers, refrigeration, compressed air, water/wastewater systems, conveyors, PLCs, HMIs, automation, and facility infrastructure.
Partner with QA and Food Safety teams to support HACCP, GMP, GFSI/SQF or BRC requirements, USDA/FDA expectations, allergen controls, sanitation design, hygienic zoning, environmental monitoring, and food defense.
Drive continuous improvement using Root Cause Analysis, 5-Why, A3, Lean, Six Sigma, standard work, and data-driven problem solving.
Ensure compliance with OSHA, LOTO, electrical safety, refrigeration/ammonia safety, environmental regulations, building codes, and company standards.
Provide leadership across engineering, maintenance, reliability, facilities, utilities, and automation functions.
Manage engineering budgets, capital expenditures, contractors, utilities, MRO inventory, and cost-reduction initiatives.
Support new product introductions, process validation, packaging changes, capacity expansions, and automation improvements.
Establish engineering standards, project management practices, sanitation-ready equipment design, documentation controls, and technical training programs.
Provide technical recommendations, risk assessments, project updates, and engineering support to senior leadership.
Required Qualifications
Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, or a related technical field.
15+ years of progressive engineering, maintenance, reliability, or technical operations experience.
Experience in food manufacturing, refrigerated foods, ready-to-eat foods, protein processing, sous vide, aseptic, pharmaceutical, or another highly regulated manufacturing environment.
7+ years of leadership experience managing engineering, maintenance, reliability, automation, or facilities teams in a 24/7 manufacturing environment.
Strong experience with capital projects, plant expansions, equipment installation, automation upgrades, commissioning, and startup.
Knowledge of preventive/predictive maintenance, CMMS, maintenance planning, RCM, RCA, and spare parts management.
Working knowledge of HACCP, GMPs, sanitation design, allergen control, environmental monitoring, GFSI/SQF/BRC, and OSHA…