Furnace Engineer

Eaton

Horseheads, NY

Pay: $86,000-$126,000/yr

Eaton’s Power Components Division is currently seeking a Furnace Engineer to join the team. This role is based at the Horseheads, NY manufacturing facility.

The expected annual salary range for this role is $86000 - $126000 a year.

Please note the salary information shown above is a general guideline only. Salaries are based upon candidate skills, experience, and qualifications, as well as market and business considerations.

**What you’ll do:**

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The Furnace Engineer provides engineering and technical leadership for the operation, reliability, maintenance, improvement, and long-term performance of the plant's vacuum furnace and belt furnace equipment. This role applies expertise in vacuum technology, mechanical systems, electrical systems, controls, and heat-treatment processes to ensure furnace systems operate safely, reliably, efficiently, and within established product and process requirements. The position supports furnace troubleshooting, preventive and predictive maintenance, process optimization, equipment upgrades, capital projects, commissioning, technical documentation, and continuous improvement. The Furnace Engineer partners with Production, Maintenance, Quality, Manufacturing Engineering, EHS, suppliers, and equipment manufacturers to improve furnace availability, product quality, process capability, and equipment reliability.

**Essential Functions:**

• **Asset Reliability:** Provide engineering support and technical ownership for vacuum furnaces and belt furnaces equipment, including vacuum systems, hot zones, heating elements, graphite/carbon components, insulation, cooling systems, gas systems, quenching systems, instrumentation, power supplies, and associated mechanical and electrical equipment. Evaluate furnace condition, reliability, capability, and performance. Identify equipment risks and develop long-range recommendations for equipment reliability and technically appropriate corrective actions, upgrades, repairs, or replacement recommendations. Provide technical support for furnace vacuum systems, including vacuum pumps, valves, seals, piping, chambers, instrumentation, pressure/vacuum gauges, and related components. Develop and improve preventive and predictive maintenance strategies for critical furnace systems and components to reduce recurrence and minimize equipment downtime and production disruption. Partner with Maintenance techs and Manufacturing Engineering to improve furnace reliability, availability, maintainability, spare-parts strategies, and long-term equipment health.

• **Process Performance:** Develop, evaluate, and optimize cycles, heating and cooling profiles, vacuum levels, hold times, gas-quenching conditions, ramp rates, temperature uniformity, and other furnace process parameters to consistently achieve material and product requirements. Apply knowledge of heat transfer, and furnace operation to improve process capability, repeatability, cycle efficiency, throughput, product quality, and equipment performance. Design and optimize precise temperature zones, belt speeds, and heating/cooling rates to meet needed specifications. Control hydrogen and nitrogen (purge gas) flow rates and dew points to ensure effective oxide layer reduction and prevent contamination. Partner with Quality and Manufacturing Engineering to maintain robust process controls and support furnace qualification, process validation, temperature uniformity activities, instrumentation requirements, audits, corrective actions, process documentation, and investigation of furnace-related product or process nonconformances. Support deployment of the Eaton Quality System and Eaton Continuous Improvement by identifying opportunities to improve furnace reliability, cycle time, process capability, energy efficiency, throughput, product quality, maintainability, and operating cost.

**Essential Functions:**

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• **Controls and Troubleshooting:** Provide technical leadership for troubleshooting complex mechanical, electrical, vacuum, instrumentation, heating, cooling, gas, and control-system failures affecting furnace operation. Perform structured root-cause analysis of recurring equipment failures, process interruptions, vacuum issues, temperature deviations, system alarms, control failures, and other furnace-related problems. Provide engineering support for furnace PLCs, HMIs, control systems, instrumentation, sensors, thermocouples, temperature controls, alarms, interlocks, data-acquisition systems, and electrical components.

• **Engineering Projects:** Develop and optimize mechanical designs associated with furnace systems, including hot zones, carbon/graphite components, fixtures, equipment modifications, and supporting mechanical systems using appropriate CAD/design tools. Develop technical specifications, drawings, layouts, bills of material, scopes of work, and other engineering documentation required for furnace repairs, modifications, upgrades, and new