Who is Dr Docter - second-hand-tigers/badocter-career-learnings GitHub Wiki
Learning Hub βΊ Career Learnings Directory βΊ Dr. Docter's Career Learnings
Who is Dr. Docter?
Personal Profile
Bill Docter β Founder, Second-Hand Tigers. Formerly Real Time Optimization (RTO) Engineer and Principal Process Control Engineer at ExxonMobil. RTO work sits at the intersection of Process Control, Flowsheet Modeling, Economics, and Automation.
Currently active in engineering education outreach at Lamar University and building Second-Hand Tigers β a volunteer initiative developing soft-skill and career-development material for university students and early-career engineers. That work currently includes volunteering in the Chemical Engineering Senior Design class at Lamar to assess how to effectively integrate the material into the program, ahead of a potential pilot there with a long-term goal of reaching many universities and colleges globally.
Education
- Ph.D. Chemical Engineering, Lehigh University, 1998 β Chemical Process Modeling & Control Research Center β Research focus: Model Order Reduction / Subspace Identification
- B.S. Chemical Engineering, University of Cincinnati, 1993
Work Experience
27 years at ExxonMobil (1998β2026), roughly 75% in RTO roles:
| Years | Assignment |
|---|---|
| 2025β2026 | Upstream RTO Project Lead |
| 16 years | Beaumont Refinery/Chemicals |
| 2 years 8 months | Fawley (UK) Refinery |
| 2 years 8 months | Antwerp (BE) Refinery |
| 6 years | Research & Engineering |
Prior to ExxonMobil: seven three-month co-op rotations at Quantum Chemical Allen Research Center, followed by a part-time contractor role through senior year and the summer after graduation (1989β93) β polyethylene catalysis, and pneumatic controls to Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) migration project.
A full year-by-year breakdown of roles and responsibilities is on the Career Timeline page.
Leadership & Supervisory Roles
Beyond individual RTO project work, several roles carried direct people- management or governance responsibility. ExxonMobil runs two parallel career ladders: a management path (Group Lead -> Second Line Supervisor -> Department Head) and a technical path that runs alongside it. Principal Engineer is the technical path's equivalent of Department Head β proof that staying technical doesn't mean topping out below management.
-
Process Control Application Engineering Group Lead (2017β2020)
- First-line supervisory role: led Individual Development Planning for the group and served as Management of Change reviewer/approver β process-safety-adjacent governance work, reviewing whether proposed control changes were actually safe to make before they went live.
- Mentored next-up Group Leads in people development, risk management, recruiting, and leadership skill sets through shadow-to-solo progression.
- Redefined Applications Engineering technical-leadership roles and responsibilities with an explicit focus on succession planning, institutionalizing a practice that had previously depended on who happened to be mentoring whom.
-
Principal Process Control Engineer, Beaumont Area (2023β2025)
- Led fleet-wide value capture and improvement across the Beaumont Complex's Real Time Optimization (RTO) and Dynamic Matrix Control (DMC) portfolio, with the team contributing to a sustained fleet value capture exceeding $100MM/yr.
- Directed the innovation and rollout of new optimization technology and work processes across the site, institutionalizing them as the site standard.
- Championed use of GitHub to streamline collaboration, workflow, and knowledge retention across RTO projects and sustainment at Beaumont β the approach was adopted as the company standard for managing the global RTO fleet the following year.
- Established the succession pipeline for the next generation of Beaumont RTO/DMC Principal Engineers, coaching engineers through Individual Development Plans β one of whom took over this role directly as I moved to my next assignment in central engineering.
- Balanced strategic and tactical resourcing across the asset base, prioritizing across multiple concurrent units and projects.
Not every leadership-heavy assignment carried a title that said so. Several roles β including the RTO Site Lead assignments and my final role as Upstream RTO Project Lead β had a substantial leadership component built into the actual initiatives and responsibilities, even though management had no separate named position mapping to that work. Before my final role, my supervisor asked directly whether I'd have an issue with the position not carrying a formal leadership title, since some senior engineers get hung up on that. Titles are useful information β they make it easier to size up where someone sits in an organization at a glance and what they're accountable for β but you should be open to roles that don't have one. Sometimes a formal title just hasn't been invented yet for the work in question. Take a thorough look at the actual roles, responsibilities, and objectives with your supervisor to get that clarity. Where there's a real leadership component, the impact will be there and will be recognized, regardless of title.
Contributions I Am Most Proud Of
And these were all as part of teams, not by myself:
- Patent on Hydrocarbon Processing Analysis
- Process Control Risk Assessment/Analysis contributions to Process Safety
- Operationalizing Fawley's diesel transition from 50ppm to 10ppm sulfur
- Driving sustained RTO & DMC fleet value capture of greater than $100MM/yr
- Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) mentoring, both in-company and external
- Redefining Applications Engineering technical leadership roles & responsibilities with a focus on succession planning
Personality & Working Style
Words to live by:
- Know thyself and those around you
- Challenge your preconceptions, or they will challenge you
MyersβBriggs Type Indicator (MBTI) & Keirsey Temperament Sorter (KTS) type:
- INTx: Introversion, iNtuition, Thinking, with a tie (x) on Judging vs Perceiving dimension score
Core Strengths Profile:
| Motive | Process |
| G-B-R Conflict Profile | Analyze - Accommodate - Assert |
| Strengths | Analytical, Adaptable, Cautious |
(Core Strengths is a full assessment framework in its own right β several hours of material if you want to go deeper. Worth looking up directly if this is new to you.)
Suggested reading: Keirsey, David. Please Understand Me II. Prometheus Nemesis Book Co., 1998. A detailed treatment of the KTS (similar to MBTI) β knowing your type, your strengths and weaknesses, and how to approach the style preferences of others. If your university or employer offers a similar assessment tool, it's worth becoming familiar with it as part of your own interpersonal development.
Outside of Work
Hobbies: Video games, Woodworking, Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Outreach, Star Trek/Star Wars
Family: Married 27 years, 2 adult children
Former roles: Youth basketball coach, drama club carpenter, Sunday school teacher, assistant Taekwondo instructor (black belt)
Related: Career Timeline Β· My Resume β A Worked Example Β· Mentoring Integration with Stage Development Β· Stress Management & Resilience Β· Pop Culture Career Lessons
License: Β© 2026 William Docter. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You may copy, redistribute, remix, and build upon this material, including for commercial purposes, provided you give appropriate credit to William Docter and indicate if changes were made. The Second-Hand Tigers logo is not covered by this license. All rights in it are reserved.