Field Service Engineer

Job Summary:
We travel to industrial facilities and perform onsite inspections of air pollution control equipment, take photos, generate lists of needed repairs, and compile this information into reports. We assist maintenance crews while the work is performed and provide quality control. These inspections mostly occur during annual maintenance outages, a.k.a. “shutdowns” at various industrial facilities. Our customers consist mainly of paper mills and power plants, though we also do some work in facilities like refineries, cement plants, sawmills, chemical plants, and sugar mills.

Most of the equipment we work on is related to particulate (dust) collection and removal from the exhaust stream of industrial boilers. This includes primarily Electrostatic Precipitators, but also Mechanical Dust Collectors, Baghouses, Scrubbers, Fans, Conveyors, Ductwork, and ash removal systems.

The reports generated by the field service personnel are critical to both the clients, and to our own internal groups, which include estimating, proposals, construction, parts, engineering, and accounting. The high-quality reports we generate help our clients justify and budget for major repairs needed in the future, and help our office personnel put together quality engineering solutions and competitive bids.

Precipitator work is 50% mechanical and 50% electrical. We do our best to cross-train all of our field personnel to be proficient at both. “Electrical” personnel are expected to perform mechanical functions like HV frame alignment, conveyor alignment, corrosion damage assessments, and welding inspections. “Mechanical” personnel are expected to be able to perform basic electrical troubleshooting, using meters to check equipment like transformers, heaters, and control panels. This can include open load testing of transformers, megger testing of transformers, and evaluating power readings on controller display heads. We don’t send two employees to every job (one to perform the electrical tasks, and one to perform mechanical tasks); we just send one “jack of all trades”: the Field Service Engineer.

Basic Skills - Laptop Computer: We do all of our work on Windows-based laptops. Reports are written using Microsoft Word. Emails are done with Microsoft Outlook. Time sheets and expense reports are done on Microsoft Excel. Drawings (mostly simple inspection maps, etc.) are done using AutoCAD. With the exception of AutoCAD, which we will teach you, the rest of these software platforms should be familiar to anyone who has graduated high school and taken at least some college. Typing proficiency and decent grammar / spelling skills are a plus.

Electrical Knowledge: We are targeting individuals with at least a basic understanding of electrical concepts, like the relationship between voltage and current. Ohm’s law. AC vs. DC. How to use the basic functions on a multimeter / ohmmeter / current clamp. Understanding simple waveforms. Understanding the role and function of basic electrical components like resistors, capacitors, breakers, contactors, and conductors. Experience with an oscilloscope is a plus, though not a requirement.

Mechanical Knowledge: Experience with gears, drives, chains, rigging, and welding of any type is a plus. Being able to read a tape measure and add/subtract basic fractions is a must.

Physical Requirements: The job can be physically demanding. We enter into confined spaces to perform mechanical inspections. These spaces are ventilated, but they are typically not air conditioned. It can be hot in the summer, or cold in the winter. Employees will get hot, sweaty, and dirty. We clean the equipment, but there will still be some residual dust in the environment. There is some climbing involved. Climbing around on frames, climbing up and down ladders, climbing stairs, climbing scaffolding, climbing in and out of access doors. These are construction sites / industrial environments.  

Travel Requirements: Our customers’ mills and plants are scattered throughout the country. Most of them are within a day’s drive of Troy Alabama. A few are in far-flung places like Washington, Minnesota, South Florida, or Wyoming. For the far away jobs, you would be expected to fly. For the vast majority of jobs, you would be driving a company truck (late model Chevy Silverado).

A Typical Job duration: Most annual maintenance outages at a paper mill last 4-7 days. Some are shorter, only 1-2 days. Some jobs with major scopes of work (like a rebuild, for example) can last 2-3 weeks. The longer-term jobs are few, and the 1-week jobs are far more common.

Busy season: The spring and fall are our busiest times of year, for multiple reasons. The weather being nice means worker productivity is highest, so a lot of facilities shut down for maintenance and bring in contractors during the spring and fall months. Don’t plan on any long vacations in April or October. We will be all-hands-on-deck, working back-to-back jobs in the busy season. The remaining months you may work 2 weeks out of the month. On average. The winter months are typically slow.

When you aren’t on a job: Most field personnel work from home (WFH). The time spent at home is expected to be used to write your reports, do your expense reports, and be on call for any emergency situation that might arise. You are guaranteed 40 hours a week, so if you come home from a job and spend 8 hours writing your report, and you are all caught up, then you still get paid the remaining 32 hours that week. Unless you have asked off for vacation, we expect you to be reachable by phone and available to travel.

Office Requirement for New Hires: For the first year of employment, the employee would be expected to work out of the Troy Office when not on a jobsite. This speeds up the learning process and ensures good time management skills and habits are learned. Once the first-year training period is complete, the employee would be free to work from home, and that home could be almost anywhere in the country (though we highly encourage remaining in the southeast, where most of our customers are located).

Emergency Jobs / Troubleshooting: Our company is known for being both exceptionally experienced, as well as exceptionally responsive. Some of these mills lose tens of thousands of dollars every hour that they have to remain offline due to a mechanical or electrical problem with their pollution control equipment. They will not hesitate to call us in the middle of the night, or on weekends, for help. We put out the fires. Quickly and efficiently. The tip of the spear is the Field Service Engineer / Technician.