Planning & Optimization III/Senior Engineer

# An exciting career awaits you

At MPC, we’re committed to being a great place to work – one that welcomes new ideas, encourages diverse perspectives, develops our people, and fosters a collaborative team environment.

Position Summary

Do you have a quantitative background? Do you like solving complex business problems through data? Marathon Petroleum Company LP (MPC) has an opening within the Value Chain Optimization organization on the Value Chain Insights team. Our mission is to deliver exceptional, cutting-edge analytics and meaningful insights that empower decision-makers by increasing trust and confidence in our reporting and reducing barriers to timely, actionable insight.

This role sits in the Model Interpretation vertical and is an individual contributor responsible for interpreting, validating, and communicating outputs from Marathon’s enterprise optimization models across the value chain. This role requires exceptional communication skills, creative problem-solving abilities, and relationship-building expertise to make complex technical outputs accessible and actionable, including the responsible use of AI-assisted interpretation and summarization tools where appropriate. Success depends on the ability to build credibility as a trusted advisor, craft compelling narratives from data, and develop innovative approaches to interpretation challenges.

This position belongs to a family of jobs with increasing responsibility, competency, and skill level. Actual position title and pay grade will be based on the selected candidate’s experience and qualifications.

Key Responsibilities

- Translates complex optimization model outputs into clear, actionable guidance for planners, schedulers, and commercial teams.

- Ensures consistency and accuracy in interpretation across PPIMS, XPIMS, DPO, and other optimization platforms, using defined interpretation standards and a common glossary.

- Provide day-to-day decision support to business users, enabling timely understanding of model recommendations.

- Partners with modeling teams to validate assumptions, highlight sensitivities, and align model results with operational realities.

- Applies creative problem-solving to reconcile apparent conflicts between model outputs and business intuition, investigating root causes when standard interpretation approaches are insufficient.

- Builds and maintains trusted relationships with planners, schedulers, commercial teams, and operations personnel, serving as a bridge between technical modeling teams and business users.

- Proactively engages stakeholders to understand their decision contexts, sources of confusion, and skepticism regarding model outputs.

- Facilitates dialogue that builds mutual understanding and model confidence, tailoring communication style and technical depth for audiences ranging from front-line users to executive decision-makers.

- Partners with Regional VCO, Commercial, and Operations to integrate model insights into planning and execution cycles.

- Establishes feedback loops with business users to continuously improve interpretation quality and relevance.

- Coordinates with Analytics Support to ensure modeling outputs and decision-support tools evolve in tandem.

Minimum Qualifications

- Bachelor’s degree in Engineering required.

- Four (4) years relevant experience required.

- Technical Services or Economics & Planning experience preferred.

- Experience working with LP models (PIMS), as well as Refining and Midstream operations preferred.

Preferred Qualifications

- Experience interpreting LP/DPO or refinery models (e.g., PIMS, XPIMS, GAMS, AIMMS) and communicating model output to stakeholders.

- Creative problem-solving and innovation with new tools, techniques, and approaches to enhance insight accessibility and adoption.

- Experience connecting optimization model outputs to commercial strategy, pricing signals, and operational decision points.

- Exposure to Power BI, data visualization, or AI-assisted analytics platforms, including practical use of copilots/assistants for summarization, reporting, and stakeholder communications.

- Experience with manipulating and analyzing complex, high-volume, high-dimensional data from varying sources and communicating complex quantitative analysis in a clear, precise, and actionable manner.

- Proven ability to think critically and solve problems, given incomplete information and/or ambiguous requirements. A flexible analytic approach that provides results at varying levels of precision.

Skills

- Action Planning - Establishing an action plan for self and others (if tasked) to complete work efficiently and on time by setting priorities and/or adjusting priorities when appropriate and identifying more/less critical activities/assignments, establishing timelines and milestones by allocating appropriate amounts of time for completing own and others' work and avoiding scheduling conflicts, and leveraging resources (individuals, processes, departments, and tools). Coordinates with internal and external partners. Uses time effectively and prevents irrelevant issues or distractions from interfering with work completion. Establishes procedures to remain aware of issues, follow up on action items, and track results.

- Adaptability - Maintaining effectiveness when experiencing major changes in work responsibilities or environment (e.g., people, processes, structure, or culture); adjusting effectively to change by exploring the benefits, trying new approaches, and collaborating with others to make the change successful.

- Business Acumen - Applies knowledge of MPC’s business, industry and the marketplace to advance the organization’s goals. Makes decisions and recommendations clearly linked to MPC’s strategy.

- Communication - The ability to speak and write effectively, demonstrates fundamental command of language, communicates well using all mediums

- Continuous Learning - The desire to constantly learn new skills and develop competencies that will improve performance and effectiveness. Desire to build a deep understanding of one’s work, business, and role within the organization showing an inclination to seek information in order to fully understand a problem or project

- Critical Thinking - Identifying and understanding issues, problems and opportunities; using data analysis to draw conclusions; using judgment in choosing a course of action; taking action that is consistent with available facts, constraints and probable consequences. Intellectually curious

- Decision Making - Ability to know when and what decisions should be made and to make several decisions simultaneously in a fast-paced, rapidly changing environment

- Innovation - Creating novel solutions with measurable value for existing and potential customers (internal or external); experimenting with new ways to solve work problems and seize opportunities that result in unique and differentiated solutions

- Problem Solving - Problem Solving is a step-by-step process of defining a problem, searching for information, and testing a series of solutions until the problem is solved. It involves critical thinking, analysis and persistence

- Results Driven - Drives operational and process excellence and innovative behavior

- by empowering others, collaborating, taking appropriate risk, making timely decisions and holding people accountable for results.

- Teamwork - The ability of team members to work well together in every situation and empathize with each other. Teamwork skills consist of interrelated abilities that let you work effectively in an organized group.

As an energy industry leader, our career opportunities fuel personal and professional growth.

Location:

Findlay, Ohio

Job Requisition ID:

00021687

Pay Min/Max:

$122,900.00 - $212,000.00 Salary

Grade:

12 - 13

Location Address:

539 S Main St

Additional locations:

Anacortes WA Refinery, Canton OH Refinery, Catlettsburg KY Refinery, Detroit MI Refinery, El Paso TX Refinery, Galveston Bay Refinery, Garyville LA Refinery, Houston, Texas, Kenai AK Refinery, Los Angeles CA Refinery, Mandan ND Refinery, Robinson IL Refinery, Salt Lake City UT Refinery, San Antonio, Texas, St Paul Park MN Refinery, Texas City TX Refinery

Education:

Bachelors: Engineering (Required)

Employee Group:

Full time

Employee Subgroup:

Regular

Marathon Petroleum Company LP is an Equal Opportunity Employer and gives consideration for employment to qualified applicants without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, sex, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, reproductive health decision-making, age, mental or physical disability, medical condition or AIDS/HIV status, ancestry, national origin, genetic information, military, veteran status, marital status, citizenship or any other status protected by applicable federal, state, or local laws. If you would like more information about your EEO rights as an applicant, click here.

If you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application process at Marathon Petroleum LP, please contact our Human Resources Department at talentacquisition@marathonpetroleum.com. Please specify the reasonable accommodation you are requesting, along with the job posting number in which you may be interested. A Human Resources representative will review your request and contact you to discuss a reasonable accommodation. Marathon Petroleum offers a total rewards program which includes, but is not limited to, access to health, vision, and dental insurance, paid time off, 401k matching program, paid parental leave, and educational reimbursement. Detailed benefit information is available at mympcbenefits.com. The hired candidate will also be eligible for a discretionary company-sponsored annual bonus program.

Equal Opportunity Employer: Veteran / Disability

We will consider all qualified Applicants for employment, including those with arrest or conviction records, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws. In reviewing criminal history in connection with a conditional offer of employment, Marathon will consider the key responsibilities of the role.