Reliability Engineer

About NAES

At NAES, you’ll find engaging and challenging career opportunities in the power generation, renewable energy and industrial construction industry. At every level of the company, we share a common goal: To instill confidence in our clients through our steadfast commitment to safety, integrity and quality of work.

NAES is largest independent operator of power facilities in the industry, operating more than 190 power plants throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico and the UK that span all technologies and provide over 49 GW of capacity. With the strength of 4000 people, our growing family of companies now addresses the entire life cycle of power generation and other industrial plants.

Summary

The Fleet Reliability Engineer is a fleet-level technical leader responsible for improving equipment reliability, production assurance, and risk performance across a mixed generation portfolio. Reporting to the Fleet Director of Risk and Reliability, serve as a principal technical contributor to the Company's High Reliability Program (HRP) and Production Assurance / Dynamic Risk & Reliability framework. Integrate reliability engineering, asset management, condition monitoring, maintenance strategy, root cause analysis, risk management, and data analytics to identify emerging threats, reduce repeat failures, improve equipment health, and protect generation capability. Use data, field observations, engineering judgment, and structured reliability methods to challenge ineffective strategies and drive measurable, sustainable improvement.

Primary Duties

• High Reliability Program execution. Support and continuously improve the fleet High Reliability Program, including standards, assessments, governance routines, reliability reviews, performance metrics, and site implementation expectations.
• Production assurance and dynamic risk management. Maintain and advance a current view of reliability and production risks, including threat identification, risk ranking, mitigation planning, ownership, due dates, residual risk, and potential production-loss exposure.
• Equipment criticality. Develop and maintain risk-based equipment and system criticality rankings that reflect safety, environmental, production, financial, redundancy, and repair-duration consequences.
• Maintenance strategy optimization. Evaluate preventive and predictive maintenance strategies using failure history, equipment criticality, condition information, OEM guidance, operating context, PM effectiveness, and failure-mode analysis. Recommend additions, deletions, interval changes, task conversions, or redesign where justified.
• Condition monitoring and predictive maintenance. Provide technical oversight for vibration analysis, lubrication and oil analysis, infrared thermography, ultrasound, motor/electrical testing, performance monitoring, and other condition-based technologies. Ensure findings are converted into timely risk-informed action.
• Bad-actor elimination. Identify repetitive, high-cost, high-risk, and high-production-impact equipment and systems. Lead structured bad-actor reviews and ensure corrective plans address underlying failure mechanisms.
• Root cause and failure analysis. Lead or facilitate RCA, apparent cause, causal learning, failure review, and event investigations. Ensure actions are technically sound, risk prioritized, owned, tracked, and verified for effectiveness.
• System and equipment health. Develop, standardize, and monitor fleet equipment-health indicators, thresholds, scorecards, and exception reports. Escalate adverse trends before functional failure or forced production loss occurs.
• Reliability risk reviews. Participate in and lead fleet and site risk reviews. Translate equipment condition, work backlog, engineering issues, temporary configurations, operating constraints, and deferred maintenance into an integrated risk picture.
• Asset management and life-cycle planning. Support repair-versus-replace decisions, obsolescence management, end-of-life planning, spares strategy, capital prioritization, and long-term asset health decisions using risk and life-cycle value.
• Outage and forced-loss reduction. Analyze forced outages, derates, start failures, trips, and significant equipment events to identify systemic drivers and fleetwide corrective opportunities.
• Data analytics and digital reliability. Use CMMS/EAM, historian, BI, and reliability-software data to identify patterns, validate hypotheses, prioritize work, and measure results. Help define requirements for dynamic reliability and production-assurance software capabilities.
• Standards and fleet learning. Develop and maintain fleet reliability standards, playbooks, templates, technical guidance, lessons learned, and repeatable analytical methods. Promote cross-site replication of successful solutions.
• Cross-functional influence. Build alignment with plant leaders and functional organizations without relying on direct reporting authority. Communicate risk in business terms and influence timely decisions.
• Continuous improvement. Benchmark reliability performance, identify maturity gaps, and lead improvement initiatives that strengthen preventive, predictive, proactive, and precision-maintenance practices.

Working Relationships

This role will work closely with a broad range of stakeholders across the organization, including the Fleet Director of Risk and Reliability, Plant Managers and site leadership, operations leaders and operators, maintenance leaders, planners, schedulers, and craft organizations, as well as plant and fleet engineering teams. Collaborate with outage management and project engineering, Supply Chain, warehouse, and strategic spares teams, along with OEMs, service providers, and specialist technical contractors. In addition, the position will partner with data, digital, and software teams supporting reliability and production-assurance platforms.

Compensation

The initial salary range is $137,500 to $158,100 based on experience and qualifications.

Job Qualifications

• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical, Electrical, Chemical, Industrial, Reliability or a related engineering discipline from an accredited college or university recognized by the United States Department of Education or equivalent. Relevant work experience may be substituted for education on a year-for-year basis.

• Years of Experience:
  • Seven years of progressively responsible power-generation or heavy industrial experience.
  • Three years of direct involvement in reliability engineering, maintenance engineering, equipment/system engineering, asset management, or closely related work.
  • Experience with rotating and stationary equipment, electrical systems, instrumentation and controls, balance-of-plant systems, and/or generation process systems sufficient to perform fleet-level reliability analysis.
  • Experience applying structured problem-solving, root cause analysis, failure analysis, equipment criticality, maintenance strategy optimization, and condition-monitoring principles.

• Preferred Experience:
  • Formal RCA facilitator training and experience leading complex equipment or production-loss investigations.
  • Experience with multiple generating technologies in a mixed fleet, such as combined-cycle, simple-cycle combustion turbine, steam turbine, reciprocating engine, conventional thermal, hydro, or renewable generation.
  • Experience with fleet-level governance, reliability maturity assessments, asset-health programs, risk registers, production assurance, or dynamic reliability systems.

• Licenses/Certification:
  • CMRP, CRE, PE (preferred)
  • Category I/II/III vibration certification, infrared thermography, lubrication analysis, ultrasound, motor testing, or other predictive-maintenance certification (preferred)

• Software/Equipment Knowledge:
  • CMMS/EAM platforms such as IBM Maximo, SAP or equivalent systems
  • Process/data historians such as AVEVA PI System or equivalent
  • Power BI or comparable business-intelligence and visualization tools
  • Reliability, asset-health, risk-registry, RCA, and condition-monitoring software
  • Advanced Microsoft Excel knowledge

• Other Considerations:
  • Strong written, verbal, facilitation, presentation, and technical documentation skills.
  • Able to interpret equipment history, work orders, inspection findings, process and historian trends, event data and technical documentation.
  • Able to influence technical and business decisions across functions and organizational levels.
  • Able to integrate information from work management, condition monitoring, operations, engineering, and event-management systems into a coherent equipment-risk picture.

• Core Competencies:
  • Reliability engineering and systems thinking
  • Risk identification, prioritization, and mitigation
  • Technical curiosity and disciplined problem solving
  • Data-driven decision making
  • Cross-functional influence and constructive challenge
  • Business and production awareness
  • Field presence and equipment ownership mindset
  • Bias for timely action with appropriate technical rigor
  • Standardization and continuous improvement
  • Clear executive and technical communication
  • Vendor Interaction: Ability to coordinate with vendors when required, including reviewing technical proposals, and supporting scope execution

Physical Requirements and Working Conditions

Normal working hours are 8:00a.m. to 5:00p.m. Monday through Friday. Extended hours may be required based on specific project requirements. Ability to travel up to 25% is required. Work is performed at an established industrial site that requires protective clothing and equipment, which NAES will pay for. Work at facilities can occur around industrial hazards, in areas of high noise levels, and around new construction. Physical mobility to transverse stairways, ladders, grating, and uneven terrain are essential. Ability to see, hear, read, and react to warning signs, lights, and alarms are essential.

Fit for Duty

All employees will participate in the Fitness for Duty Program. This program includes a post-offer physical examination and drug screening and post-employment random drug screening. There are extensive smoking restrictions in and around the facility.

NAES Safe

Safety is a core value of NAES and as a condition of employment, all employees are expected to be mentally alert and work safely at all times. Additionally, employees are required to adhere to all safety warnings and posted safety signs whenever on company property. Furthermore, employees must follow all NAES safety rules and procedures. Effectiveness in carrying out this responsibility is part of the evaluation of each employee’s performance.

NAES is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace. It is the practice of NAES to seek employees of the highest quality and to select individuals on the basis of merit and competence, without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, military status or affiliation protected under USERRA, or any other basis of discrimination prohibited by applicable local, state and federal law.