Associate Specialist, Engineering

Merck Merck · Pharma · NJ

This role provides on-site engineering support for sterile operations in a pharmaceutical research lab, focusing on maintaining facility, utilities, and manufacturing equipment according to GMP and Safety requirements. Responsibilities include troubleshooting, supporting quality engineering and capital projects, managing equipment changes, evaluating deviations, and supporting sterilization and cleaning validation programs. The position requires a Bachelor's degree in engineering or science and familiarity with cGMP, sterile drug product manufacturing equipment, and CMMS.

What you'd actually do

  1. Maintain facility, utilities, and manufacturing equipment in accordance with GMP and Safety requirements, while applying Reliability Maintenance best practices to ensure timely availability of clinical and development batches.
  2. Provide support for Quality Engineering (QE) and capital project.
  3. Support the full equipment validation lifecycle (from commissioning through decommissioning) by preparing, executing, and approving protocols.
  4. Evaluate deviations, issue Quality Notification (QN), perform investigations, identify root causes and any related corrective actions/ preventive actions (CAPA).
  5. Support the sterile validation program, both sterilization and cleaning.

Skills

Required

  • Quality
  • cGMP
  • Safety & Environmental Policies and Procedures
  • Sterile Drug Product manufacturing equipment and process
  • Computerized Maintenance and Management Systems (CMMS)
  • Troubleshooting ability (mechanical/electrical/automation)
  • Ability to flexibly adapt to flow of the work across both Quality and Facility aspects to support the business
  • Effective organizational skills
  • Effective communication and technical writing skills
  • Strong computer skills
  • Contractor Oversight
  • Driving Continuous Improvement
  • Engineering Standards
  • Equipment Qualification
  • Estimation and Planning
  • GMP Compliance
  • GMP Validation
  • Lean Manufacturing
  • Manufacturing Quality Control
  • Manufacturing Scale-Up
  • Process Control
  • Process Optimization
  • Process Scale Up
  • Teamwork
  • Writing Technical Documents

Nice to have

  • Maintenance & Engineering techniques and management and Capital Project management
  • Independent problem- solving
  • SAP Plant Maintenance (Gatekeeping and Work Order Prioritization)
  • eVal/Kneat - Paperless electronic validation system
  • Experience with ProCal as a Computerized Calibration Maintenance System (CCMS)
  • Familiarity with Planning and Scheduling practices as well as business/financial practices
  • The candidate should be able to work independently and lead or facilitate tasks successfully.