Senior Process Engineer

Senior Process Engineer

Food & Beverage / Sanitary Process Engineering | Madison / Amherst, Wisconsin area

The Opportunity

We're partnering with a growing food and beverage process engineering firm in Wisconsin to find a Senior Process Engineer who wants real ownership, not a supporting role. This is a newly created position designed to take true end-to-end process design work off the Engineering Manager's plate as the company scales.

You'll own projects from concept through commissioning: mass balances, process flow diagrams, full P&ID design, equipment sizing and specification. This isn't editing someone else's drawings or filling in the gaps behind a senior engineer. You're the one designing the mix-proof valve clusters, specifying the CIP systems, and sitting across the table from the client to figure out exactly what their plant needs.

What You'll Own

• Full P&ID, PFD, and mass balance ownership on food and beverage capital projects, concentrated in dairy but spanning cheese, beverage, protein, and other sanitary processing verticals
• Hands-on design of mix-proof valve clusters and fully automated sanitary systems
• Equipment sizing, specification, and RFQ development
• Direct client relationships, from scoping conversations through startup and commissioning
• Utility and equipment matrices, SOPs/SSOPs, and functional/process descriptions

What Success Looks Like

In your first 90 days: you're onboarded to the company's sanitary design standards and equipment supplier landscape, shadowing active projects, and demonstrating you can independently design a mix-proof valve cluster and a basic P&ID.

By 180 days: you're owning P&ID and process design on at least one active project with minimal oversight, communicating with clients directly, and contributing to equipment/utility matrix and RFQ development.

By year one: you're fully owning projects concept-through-commissioning, meaningfully reducing the Engineering Manager's day-to-day design load, and driving process-improvement work.

We're Looking For

Must-Haves:

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering
• 8-10+ years of process engineering experience (flexible for candidates with 5-7 years coming directly out of dairy plant operations)
• Hands-on dairy or equivalent high-sanitary process design experience, including independent mix-proof valve cluster design
• True, demonstrated ownership of P&IDs, PFDs, mass balances, and equipment/utility matrices
• Strong customer-facing communication skills
• Ability to travel domestically approximately 30%

Nice-to-Haves:

• Supervisory or mentoring experience
• AutoCAD (isometric drawings); SolidWorks, Revit, or Lucid experience a plus
• Experience writing SOPs/SSOPs and functional/process descriptions
• International project experience or passport eligibility
• Packaging systems experience
• Consulting or systems-integration background (preferred over plant-operations-only experience)

Who Thrives Here

This role is built for someone who takes ownership without being asked twice, communicates clearly and directly, and genuinely enjoys the variety of solving a different process puzzle for every client. You'll fit right in if you're collaborative, low-ego, and more interested in getting the design right than being the smartest person in the room.

This isn't the right fit if you're used to handing off P&ID work to someone else, prefer to stay behind the scenes rather than work directly with clients, or are looking for a narrowly defined, single-industry role.

The Seat in Summary

• True end-to-end design ownership, not downstream editing
• A growing, founder-transitioning company building out its engineering bench
• Variety across dairy, cheese, beverage, protein, and other sanitary processing projects
• A collaborative, tight-knit team culture
• A real path toward technical leadership, mentoring, or business development as the company scales