Sr. Engineer, Controls and Automation

Mitsubishi Chemical · Chesapeake, VA

Level: Senior
Team: Controls
Industry: Chemicals
Posted: 2 days ago

The role in 30 seconds

A senior controls role at Mitsubishi Chemical (chemicals) in Chesapeake, VA. Design, specify, modify, and support industrial electrical and control systems, including power distribution, motor-control equipment, PLCs, HMIs, variable-frequency and DC drives, instrumentation, sensors, industrial networks, and machine-safety interfaces.

Tools it names: Root cause, PLC, Automation
Day to day: some off-shift / weekend coverage

Read from the posting. The full description is below.

From the plant jobs report · week of November 2, 2026

Controls Engineer roles in Virginia: typical posted base $97k–$143k.

Median of the low and high ends of 7 live postings that list pay, out of 15 controls engineer openings in Virginia, read from manufacturers' own careers sites.

Virginia plant jobs report →Pay by team and state →What moves pay →

How this role compares

Against 14 other live controls postings in Virginia.

Base pay: Not listed in this posting
Experience asked: Not stated

Skills these teams ask for most

✓ PLC 53%
✓ Automation 53%
✓ Root cause 33%
Team leadership 33%
Tooling 27%
FDA / GMP 20%

✓ = this posting asks for it too. % = share of similar postings that mention it.

At a glance

Off-shift / weekend coverage

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 Controls team at Mitsubishi Chemical
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?
- How does off-shift and weekend coverage work?
- How did you land the job? What stood out in your interviews?
4
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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 Mitsubishi ChemicalAs posted on their careers site.Show

requirements

with Information Technology and designated corporate resources.

✓Develop and maintain logical and physical OT network architecture, managed industrial switches, fiber and copper backbone requirements, network cabinets, UPS needs, addressing conventions, VLAN and segmentation requirements, and resilient communications paths.
✓Lead or support design, configuration, testing, commissioning, and expansion of the Ignition SCADA platform, including gateways and clients, PLC connectivity, tags, alarms, trends, dashboards, historian functions, time synchronization, and approved system interfaces.
✓Establish and maintain an OT asset inventory and device/IP register covering PLCs, HMIs, drives, instruments, switches, gateways, servers, workstations, and other connected production assets.
✓Configure and troubleshoot industrial communications, including Ethernet/IP and other plant protocols, and isolate addressing, port, cabling, switch, bandwidth, duplicate-device, time-synchronization, and communications faults.
✓Coordinate IT/OT boundary requirements, including approved architecture, segmentation, firewall rules, secure vendor access, accounts, patch and firmware planning, endpoint protection, logging, monitoring, and incident response.
✓Develop backup, restore, disaster-recovery, and configuration-management practices for SCADA and OT assets and periodically verify recoverability.
✓Plan cutovers and migrations with documented prerequisites, tests, communications, rollback points, production contingencies, post-startup monitoring, and turnover documentation.
✓Develop OT and SCADA standards for naming, addressing, switch configuration, network drawings, cabinet design, remote connectivity, alarms, historian tags, programming changes, and future expansion.
✓Partner with cybersecurity and IT resources to assess vulnerabilities and operational risk without compromising process safety, availability, vendor support, or validated functionality.

Show full description ↓

Company

MCA - Alpolic

Job Description

The Sr. Engineer, Controls and Automation provides senior-level plant engineering leadership for electrical power, controls, automation, operational technology (OT), SCADA, and equipment-reliability needs in a continuous manufacturing environment. The role partners daily with Engineering, Maintenance, Production, HSE, Quality, Information Technology, corporate digital resources, vendors, and contractors to safely troubleshoot chronic failures; design and execute upgrades; establish and support secure, maintainable OT network infrastructure; implement and sustain the plant SCADA platform; improve equipment availability; and ensure electrical, controls, and OT systems are documented, recoverable, and aligned with company standards. The position combines hands-on field support with disciplined engineering analysis, network and control-system architecture, project execution, commissioning, cybersecurity coordination, and technical stewardship of production assets and facility systems.

Electrical, Controls, and Automation Engineering

•Design, specify, modify, and support industrial electrical and control systems, including power distribution, motor-control equipment, PLCs, HMIs, variable-frequency and DC drives, instrumentation, sensors, industrial networks, and machine-safety interfaces.
•Develop control narratives, functional requirements, I/O lists, panel layouts, schematics, network architecture, bills of material, and installation work packages.
•Program, configure, troubleshoot, and improve Allen-Bradley, Mitsubishi, and Siemens PLC/HMI platforms and associated drive systems. Support legacy systems while developing migration and obsolescence plans.
•Perform disciplined diagnostics using drawings, PLC logic, trend data, drive fault history, network diagnostics, and field measurements while preserving rollback capability.
•Maintain validated backups of PLC, HMI, drive, SCADA, server, and network-device configurations and control access and changes.

OT Network Infrastructure and SCADA

•Serve as the plant engineering lead and long-term technical owner for OT infrastructure supporting the SCADA system, while coordinating governance, security, remote access, server, identity, and enterprise connectivity

Reliability and Maintenance Support

•Partner with electricians, mechanics, planners, and production personnel to troubleshoot breakdowns, analyze failures, and restore equipment safely and efficiently.
•Lead or support root-cause investigations for recurring electrical, controls, communications, network, and process-equipment failures and verify corrective-action effectiveness.
•Improve preventive and predictive maintenance tasks for electrical assets, controls hardware, motors, drives, panels, field devices, SCADA components, servers, and network infrastructure.
•Review CMMS history, downtime data, alarms, work orders, historian trends, network events, and spare-parts usage to identify reliability opportunities.
•Develop critical-spare recommendations and lifecycle plans for obsolete or unsupported electrical, controls, SCADA, and OT equipment.
•Provide technical escalation support during significant equipment events and support planned shutdown, weekend, or on-call needs.

Projects, Installation, and Commissioning

•Develop project scopes, alternatives, estimates, schedules, risk assessments, and technical justifications for capital and expense projects.
•Lead or support upgrades from concept through startup, including design reviews, procurement, acceptance testing, commissioning, punch-list closure, and turnover.
•Coordinate multidisciplinary work involving mechanical systems, process requirements, electrical installation, controls integration, OT networking, SCADA, utilities, cybersecurity, and production constraints.
•Ensure projects include guarding, interlocks, alarms, maintainability, safe access, energy isolation, network and cy