R&D Process Engineering Design Lead

FMC Corporation is a global agricultural sciences company dedicated to helping growers produce food, feed, fiber and fuel for an expanding world population while adapting to a changing environment. FMC's innovative crop protection solutions – including biologicals, crop nutrition, digital and precision agriculture – enable growers, crop advisers and turf and pest management professionals to address their toughest challenges economically while protecting the environment. With approximately 6,400 employees at more than 100 sites worldwide, FMC is committed to discovering new herbicide, insecticide and fungicide active ingredients, product formulations and pioneering technologies that are consistently better for the planet.

FMC is a globally diverse organization that offers its employees exciting opportunities to work on challenging projects that are important to the achievement of our strategic objectives.  With a corporate culture of innovation, integrity, responsibility and customer intimacy, we foster “The Right Chemistry” in everything we do. We are looking for people to join us in creating, developing, and improving our products, our processes, and our markets. If you are ready to make a difference every day, FMC is ready to talk to you.  Visit FMC to learn more and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter. 

FMC Agricultural Solutions is seeking an experienced process development engineer for commercialization of new agricultural active ingredients.  Our business has a robust pipeline of new products that anticipate our customers’ needs and contribute to their long-term prosperity while advancing agriculture.

This role requires chemical engineering and organic chemistry knowledge, as well as work experience in process development, costing and design.  The successful candidate will review laboratory-based program results to develop commercial manufacturing processes as part of a cross-functional team of process chemists, analytical chemists and chemical engineers.  The successful candidate will also work with 3rd party Contract Research Organizations (CRO) pilot campaigns to extract engineering learnings to be used in future commercial manufacturing designs and 3rd party design houses to develop design packages and costing. The role will create evergreen technical transfer documents, flowsheets and ASPEN+ models through all phases of process development.

Responsibilities of the role include:

• Develop process concepts and cost analyses for chemical synthetic routes/manufacturing processes.
• Passion to bridging the gap between lab scale and production scale.
• Creativity to envision full scale challenges and possibilities from a lab experiment.
• Creativity to generate a mass balance and theoretical plant setup (process sketches, plant capacity estimates, equipment list etc.) based on lab data to be basis for an initial CAPEX project estimates.   Incorporate existing internal and external manufacturing assets when possible.
• Scientific curiosity: Interest in new technologies and analyze how/if these could be used at production scale.

• Develop basic to detailed equipment design data, define operating conditions and critical limits for the commercial process through scale-up and modeling of unit operations.
• Effectively document and transfer technology and know-how for the design, construction, and operation of commercial facilities.
• Strong experience in Process Safety Management (PSM), MoC, ISD.

Qualifications

• Minimum BS Degree Chemical Engineering; M.S. preferred
• Minimum 5 years R&D/process development experience in pharmaceutical, agricultural, fine or specialty chemicals industry required.
• Manufacturing or scale-up experience required.
• Expertise in separations and reaction technologies.
• Expertise in cost models and process simulator modeling (ASPEN+, others).
• Experience in CAPEX projects in the chemical process industry.
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills to effectively communicate technical and non-technical information with global internal and external partners required.
• Sharing nature, willing to help a colleague shine.  Challenging and respectful towards colleagues in R&D.  Become a person that colleagues want to discuss their project with.
• Expertise in process safety management, reactive/thermal hazards evaluation and regulatory ideal.
• Flexible work schedule.
• Role can be up to 40% remote with <10% travel requirement to this job.

At FMC, diversity and inclusion are in our DNA. We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer with a commitment to creating an inclusive workplace where all employees can thrive – regardless of race, gender, sex, pregnancy, gender identity and/or expression, sexual orientation, national origin or ancestry, citizenship status, color, age, religion or religious creed, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, military or veteran status, or any other basis protected by federal, state or local law. FMC also supports employee participation in company employee resource groups that celebrate the diverse backgrounds of our workforce by providing communities for employees to connect with each other and raise awareness throughout FMC. FMC complies with federal and state disability laws and makes reasonable accommodations for applicants and employees with disabilities. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, please contact our Talent Acquisition department.