Process Engineer
Eagle Foods · Waukegan, IL
- Level
- Engineer
- Team
- Process
- Degree
- Required
- Experience asked
- 50+ years
- Industry
- Industrial
- Posted
- Recently
The role in 30 seconds
An engineer-level process role at Eagle Foods (industrial) in Waukegan, IL. 1+ year's project, process or packaging engineering (food manufacturing experience preferred).
- They ask for
- 50+ years · degree required
- Tools it names
- Kaizen, 5S, Root cause, Validation (IQ/OQ/PQ)
Read from the posting. The full description is below.
From the plant jobs report · week of November 2, 2026
Process Engineer roles in Illinois: typical posted base $78k–$108k.
Median of the low and high ends of 16 live postings that list pay, out of 28 process engineer openings in Illinois, read from manufacturers' own careers sites.
Illinois plant jobs report →Pay by team and state →What moves pay →
How this role compares
Against 27 other live process postings in Illinois.
- Base pay
- Not listed in this posting
- Experience asked
- More than usual (50+ vs 5+)
Typical $78k–$108k, from 16 postings that list pay.
Similar roles usually ask 5+ years.
Skills these teams ask for most
- ✓ Root cause 50%
- Lean 46%
- Six Sigma 36%
- SPC 29%
- DOE 25%
- Tooling 21%
✓ = this posting asks for it too. % = share of similar postings that mention it.
At a glance
Pulled from the posting text. If it's not listed here, the posting didn't say.
How to get in at this plant
Five moves over a week or two. The first one takes ten minutes.
- 1
Pick 2–3 people on the Process team at Eagle Foods
Engineers who joined in the last year or two reply the most. Use the team search on this page to find them.
- 2
Send a short, curious note
One real question about their work. No favors yet. Each person gets a different note, written for this role.
- 3
Turn a reply into a short call
Questions worth asking about this team:
- What does a normal week look like on your team?
- Is the work mostly new product launches or sustaining existing lines?
- How much time do you spend on the floor versus at a desk?
- How did you land the job? What stood out in your interviews?
- 4
Apply with someone vouching for you
If the call went well, ask whether they’d pass your résumé to the hiring manager. Send your résumé link, apply that day, and let them know.
- 5
Bring proof to the interview
One page of before-and-after numbers from projects you led: scrap, OEE, cycle time, cost. Plant managers hire on results.
Full description from Eagle FoodsAs posted on their careers site.ShowHide
Responsibilities
- ◆Maintain strong floor presence to support operations, identify barriers, and drive process improvement opportunities.
- ◆Spend time on production lines developing deep understanding of all equipment and process flow
- ◆Execute plant priorities established by CI and Engineering Manager
- ◆Execute capital projects that support improved safety, new product launches, existing product expansions, improved efficiencies/throughput, and increased reliability.
- ◆Identify and resolve line process and packaging equipment barriers to meet nameplate capacities and resolve to provide stable operations (equipment, instrumentation, operator interaction/control, etc).
- ◆Conduct root-cause failure analysis for failed machine components with emphasis on repetitive failures, working closely with Maintenance and Reliability department.
- ◆Deliver technical training to operating teams on equipment and processes.
- ◆Support Product Line Supervisors to investigate, resolve, and document all process related issues using data archive system and operation tracking tools.
- ◆Develop and implement engineering standards across the plant that improve machine reliability.
- ◆Identify areas of waste related to utilities, product, and packaging materials and implement projects to reduce these costs.
- ◆Deliver technical training to operators, leads, and supervisors on equipment, process controls, centerlines, and standard work
- ◆Create one point lessons, SOPs, work instructions, and skill validation tools
- ◆Maintain training matrices related to technical and process skills
- ◆Support onboarding qualification of new team members on critical equipment
- ◆Coach frontline team during floor observations to reinforce best practices
- ◆Utilize Redzone and other plant systems to track downtime, losses, actions and trend
- ◆Support Kaizen events, loss elimination projects, and continuous improvement initiatives
- ◆Help sustain 5s, standard work, and accountability
- ◆Track action items and ensure follow through on assigned projects
- ◆Partners with Maintenance, Quality, Safety and Operations to resolve issues and improve performance
- ◆Support process reliability, product quality, safe work practices, and training effectiveness
- ◆Performs other duties as assigned
Qualifications & Competencies
- ✓Bachelor's Degree in Engineering Required. Chemical, Mechanical, Packaging Engineering preferred
- ✓1+ year's project, process or packaging engineering (food manufacturing experience preferred)
- ✓Continuous improvement experience preferred
- ✓While performing the duties of this job, the employee must be able to use a keyboard and telephone. Frequent sitting, talking, hearing, and occasional standing, stooping, kneeling, crouching, crawling, lifting 50lbs, ability to adjust vision for close vision work. Occasional exposure to airborne dust, high humidity and extreme heat are possible in the plant.
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Eagle Foods Job Opportunity
At Eagle Foods we are builders. We are builders of brands, categories, and people. Eagle Foods enjoys a rich heritage with brands that have proven category leadership for more than 150 years. Eagle is a diversified food company producing and marketing sweetened condensed and evaporated milk, snacks and convenient meal solutions products.
As a company, Eagle Foods is passionate about fostering an entrepreneurial spirit that boldly builds better people and better brands while focusing on the positive impact our company, our products and our people have on the world. Eagle Foods has a bold family of brands that consumers have come to rely on for decades, including Eagle Brand® Sweetened Condensed Milk and Evaporated Milk, Magnolia® Sweetened Condensed Milk, PET® Milk, Popcorn Indiana, Cretors Popcorn, Helper and Suddenly Salad.
Eagle Foods products are marketed and distributed across all U.S. retail channels, including grocery stores, club stores and mass-merchandisers, as well as foodservice and export, U.S. military, and private label business.