Operations Finance Leader

Are you ready to move your career forward and help shape our company’s and customers’ futures?

If you aspire to challenge yourself, work with the best in the industry and join a successful team where you can make a meaningful contribution, then we invite you to join us at Ketjen Corporation, a provider of advanced catalyst solutions to leading producers in the petrochemical, refining, and specialty chemicals industries. Together, we can create a legacy marked by innovation, excitement, and energy.

Ketjen Corporation is a provider of advanced catalyst solutions to leading producers in the petrochemical, refining, and specialty chemicals industries. Our company is driven by a strong set of core values: curiosity, care, collaboration, humility, accountability, and integrity. These values guide our decisions, shape our culture, and define how we work together to deliver exceptional value to our customers and communities.

The Operations Finance Leader leads Ketjen’s enterprise Operations Finance Center of Excellence (COE) and serves as a strategic partner to business and operations teams. This role supports improved manufacturing economics and business performance through analysis and leadership across productivity costs, inventory, capital effectiveness, and operational decision-making. The ideal candidate brings significant manufacturing operations finance experience within the specialty chemicals industry, strong financial judgment, and the ability to translate complex operational data into clear, actionable recommendations.

• Lead and develop the enterprise Operations Finance COE, establishing consistent approaches, standards, tools, and performance measures across the organization.
• Partner with business and operations leaders to shape operational strategies and evaluate financial implications, risks, and tradeoffs.
• Provide financial leadership for operations planning, forecasting, performance management, and strategic decision support.
• Drive a data-informed approach to improving manufacturing economics, cost performance, and long-term value creation.

• Lead financial analysis of manufacturing economics, including production costs, conversion costs, variances, yields, and other operational drivers.
• Evaluate cost performance and identify opportunities to improve productivity, efficiency, and margin.
• Partner with site and operations teams to understand performance gaps, validate improvement opportunities, and track financial impact.
• Develop and monitor meaningful operational finance metrics that improve transparency, accountability, and decision-making.

• Provide financial leadership and analysis related to inventory levels, valuation, reserves, obsolescence, and working capital.
• Partner with Supply Chain, Operations, and business teams to identify opportunities to optimize inventory while supporting customer and production requirements.
• Improve inventory reporting, forecasting, controls, and visibility across the enterprise.
• Evaluate the financial impact of inventory decisions and recommend actions that balance service, risk, and cash performance.

• Lead financial evaluation of capital investments, including business cases, return analysis, scenario modeling, and post-investment reviews.
• Partner with Operations, Engineering, and business leaders to prioritize capital deployment and improve capital effectiveness.
• Provide financial insights and recommendations for capacity, reliability, productivity, and other operational investments.
• Strengthen governance, reporting, and accountability for capital planning and project financial performance.

• Minimum 10 years of progressive finance experience, including significant manufacturing operations finance experience in the specialty chemicals industry.
• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Business, or a related field; or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Demonstrated expertise in manufacturing economics, cost…