R&D Pilot Plant Supervisor

Overview

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 Ketjen Corporation, a provider of advanced catalyst solutions to leading producers in the petrochemical, refining, and specialty chemicals industries.

Ketjen is hiring for our FCC R&D Pilot Plant Supervisor role. This position is a fully in-office role located in Bayport, TX.

The Pilot Plant Supervisor is responsible for leading safe, reliable, and effective pilot plant operations that support research, product development, process scale-up, manufacturing support and customer sample generation. This role requires strong technical judgment, analytical problem solving, and people leadership, with the expectation to identify practical solutions, improve operating discipline, and strengthen pilot plant capability in alignment with business and R&D priorities.

• Supervise and develop a team of 5 pilot plant operators, setting clear expectations, effective work planning, and consistent execution of operating priorities. Gather and deliver performance feedback.
• Maintain a safe operating environment through regular inspections, audits, procedure discipline, and proactive improvement of process technology. Serve as a trainer and key participant in Ketjen safety programs; develop safe operating procedures for new equipment; and support process hazard analyses and root cause investigations as needed.
• Establish training and development plans for pilot plant equipment, maintenance practices, troubleshooting, and operational readiness.
• Manage the end-to-end process for producing high-quality samples for internal and external customers, balancing delivery commitments with safety, quality, and resource constraints.
• Provide pilot plant equipment, technical services, and operating support for research and development activities across internal customer groups.
• Drive continuous improvement in pilot plant efficiency, reliability, capability, and capital readiness.
• Manage pilot plant resources and priorities in alignment with business needs. Develop and track performance metrics to improve planning, throughput, backlog management, operational effectiveness, and bottleneck resolution.
• Establish and supervise quality programs for equipment, processes, raw materials, and sample outputs.

• Participate in product development projects by translating laboratory results into safe, practical, and executable pilot-scale plans.
• Document pilot plant results, observations, and learnings in technical reports that support future scale-up, troubleshooting, and knowledge transfer.

• Contribute to process development projects by providing pilot plant expertise, capability assessments, and guidance on data translation between laboratory, pilot, and commercial scales.
• Serve as a steward for process know-how on current technologies. Capture and grow technical expertise in compounding, mixing, drying, fluidization, TOPAZ, JADE, and related pilot plant processes.
• Develop, validate, and continuously improve translation factors between pilot plant and commercial plant operations for relevant technologies and equipment.
• Identify and implement tangible improvements to existing technologies, operating practices, and pilot plant capabilities.
• Develop capital projects that improve pilot plant capability, reliability, safety, and flexibility.

• Support strategic goal setting for the pilot plant, translating business and R&D priorities into clear improvement plans for capability, capacity, safety, and operational performance.
• Lead the pilot plant team with a focus on capability building, communication, accountability, continuous improvement, cost efficiency and effective cross-functional support.

• Safety Leadership:
  Demonstrates visible ownership of safety, procedure discipline, hazard recognition, and risk-based decision…