Outside Machinist

Tidewater Staffing is currently seeking Outside Machinists for work in various local shipyards including locations of Newport News, VA, Norfolk, VA, and Portsmouth, VA.


The Outside Machinist must possess knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform job operations/tasks on conventional and nuclear ships and submarines. The Outside Machinist must be assignable to any work center excluding nuclear and subsafe machinery.

• Remove, repair, overhaul, install and align main propulsion machinery and associated equipment/components. Also remove, repair, overhaul, install, and align equipment associated with auxiliary systems such as condensers, compressors, pumps, forced draft blowers, main feed pumps, various types of valves, cargo handling machinery, anchor handling gear, boat davits, cranes, elevators, conveyors, firefighting equipment, machine shop equipment, galley, and laundry equipment.
• Install and repair foundations for operating machinery and principal structures/components of the ship’s armament.
• Install, adjust, set, and repair or replaces various control/regulating or safety devices such as meters, gauges, valves, governors, and automatic alarms. Test or assist in the testing of shipboard machinery pier side or on sea trials to prove satisfactory operation and acceptance.
• Use various portable and fixed machine tools such as boring bars, milling machines, facing machines, and drill presses. Use precision measuring instruments such as height gages, depth gages, calipers, verniers, and various types of micrometers, and assists in the use of optical equipment.
• Coordinate and arrange for the work of several trades in connection with performing work from information received from technical work documents, blueprints, specifications, and written and/or oral instructions.
• Engineer, steam, machinist, installation, marine erector, marine machinist, outfitter, outside-installation machinist Installs ship machinery, for example, propelling machinery, auxiliary motors, pumps, ventilating equipment, and steering gear, working from blueprints and using hand tools, calipers, and micrometers.
• Lays out passage holes on bulkheads, decks, and other surfaces for connections, for example shafting and steam lines.
• Installs below-deck auxiliaries, for example, evaporators, stills, heaters, pumps, condensers, and boilers, and connects them to steampipe systems.
• Tests and inspects installed machinery and equipment during dock and sea trials.
• May also set up and operate such machine shop tools as lathe, boring mill, planer, shaper, slotter, and milling machine to fabricate replacement parts.