Principal Engineer – HME Electrical and Autonomous Systems

Principal Engineer – HME Electrical and Autonomous Systems

• Join a team where diversity of thought and new ways of thinking are truly valued
• Deliver world-class engineering and maintenance support services across a diverse portfolio and stakeholder base
• Drive innovation and promote value-added growth as part of your work
• Be home every night and enjoy flexible working arrangements such as work location and hours, based nominally at the Operations Centre – Perth

About the role

All progress begins with pioneers. At Rio Tinto, it begins with you.

We are looking for a Principal Engineer – Heavy Mobile Equipment Electrical, Control and Autonomous Systems to deliver world-class Heavy Mobile Equipment (HME) asset management and engineering support across our integrated portfolio of iron ore assets.

This role presents a fantastic opportunity to develop your technical leadership skills where your talents will be exposed to the wider Maintenance Planning & Engineering team, and Iron Ore business. By living our values of Courage, Care and Curiosity, keeping your people at the heart, and modelling respectful, inclusive, and supportive behaviours in all interactions, you will lead and guide a small team of functional specialists that support each area under your remit.

Reporting to the Manager HME Engineering, this role is a great opportunity for a technical leader with great communication skills to lead a technical team.

With our goal of being the best operator, you will be tasked with developing and deploying the centralized HME Electrical and Autonomous Systems improvement program, focused on safety, cost and performance optimisation initiatives across our HME assets. As safety is a key priority, you will also directly impact ad-hoc and strategic safety needs, whether through incident investigation capability for HME-related events, projects focused on risk reduction, Elimination of Live Work, and/or best-practice replication.

This will require strong collaboration skills and partnership with our HME original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and internal experts to develop engineering solutions for immediate concerns as well as long-term strategic improvements. 

As a key technical leader in your area, you will have the opportunity to regularly engage with each of the iron ore sites, predominantly maintenance and reliability engineers, maintenance leaders and managers, to assist in problem-solving and troubleshooting of HME-related performance issues from an engineering perspective. This will also enable you to maintain visibility of site-based HME initiatives, ensuring alignment with centralized engineering improvement work., while coaching and mentoring team members, partners, and stakeholders on best-practice HME asset management principles and processes.

About You

To be successfully considered for this role, you will have a well-developed understanding of reliability-centered maintenance, change management, continuous improvement and best practice asset management principles within an Electrical and/or Control/Automation domain. Previous experience working with a Heavy Mobile Equipment portfolio base, or the demonstrated ability to transfer your technical understanding of asset management principles into new areas, is essential. Exposure to Functional Safety requirements in a mining automation environment will be highly regarded.

Your degree in Electrical, Control Systems or Mechatronics Engineering (or similar) will serve you well in applying rigour to your decision-making, and allow you to provide technical mentorship to developing Engineers and technical team members in our business. A passion to challenge the status quo and find creative ways to solve problems is critical, and will enable your team’s journey towards excellence.

You will have a demonstrated commitment to safety, wellness, environment heritage and community, with a strong dedication to the psychological and physical safety of yourself, your team, and your peers. This will allow you to lead your team to success, and provide effective goal-setting, coaching and support when needed.

As this role has a broad reach, you will have exceptional engagement skills, enabling you to effectively communicate and influence across a multi-layered and diverse stakeholder base. 

What we offer

Be recognised for your contribution, your thinking and your hard work, and go home knowing you’ve helped the world progress.

• A work environment where safety is always the number one priority
• A permanent position working directly for Rio Tinto
• A competitive base salary reflective of your skills and experience with annual incentive program
• Comprehensive medical benefits including subsidised private health insurance for employees and immediate family
• Attractive share ownership plan
• Company provided insurance cover
• Extensive salary sacrifice & salary packaging options
• Career development & education assistance to further your technical or leadership ambitions
• Ongoing access to family-friendly health and medical wellbeing support
• Leave for all of life’s reasons (vacation/annual, paid parental, sick leave)
• Exclusive employee discounts (banking, accommodation, cars, retail and more)
• Possible domestic relocation assistance

About Rio Tinto

Every idea, every innovation, every little thing the world calls ‘progress’ begins witha first step, and someone willing to take it: explorers, inventors, entrepreneurs. Pioneers. 

For nearly 150 years, Rio Tinto has been a company of pioneers – generations of people spanning the globe, all with the grit and vision to produce materials essential to human progress. 

Our iron ore has shaped skylines from Shanghai to Sydney. Our aluminium – the world’s first to be certified “responsible” – helps planes fly and makes cars lighter. Our copper helps wind turbines power cities and our boron helps feed the world, and explore the universe.Our diamonds help us celebrate the best parts of life. 

Where you’ll be working

In the Pilbara region of Western Australia, we own an integrated portfolio of iron ore assets: a world-class, integrated network of 16 mines, four independent port terminals, a 1,700 kilometre rail network and related infrastructure – all designed to respond rapidly to changes in demand.

We are one of the world’s leading producers and exporters of iron ore.

Every Voice Matters

At Rio Tinto, we particularly welcome and encourage applications from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, women, the LGBTI+ community, mature workers, people with disabilities and people from different cultural backgrounds.

We are committed to an inclusive environment where people feel comfortable to be themselves. We want our people to feel that all voices are heard, all cultures respected and that a variety of perspectives are not only welcome – they are essential to our success. We treat each other fairly and with dignity regardless of race, gender, nationality, ethnic origin, religion, age, sexual orientation or anything else that makes us different.

Applications close on Sunday 4th December 2022 (Rio Tinto reserves the right to remove advertised roles prior to this date).