Business Application Manager

Kaiser Aluminum is seeking a proactive Business Applications Manager
, hands-on leader who bridges business needs and application solutions. The role partners with Operations and other functions to understand processes and pain points, convert them into a clear technology vision, and execute a prioritized, budget-minded roadmap with measurable outcomes. Scope includes sustaining and improving application platforms (many legacy), owning integrations and data flows, managing a small development team, and delivering projects end-to-end.

IT/OT applications are treated as levers to improve manufacturing throughput, quality, cost, and reliability. The role embraces practical new technologies—LLMs where useful—to boost efficiency and quality. Coding is not the emphasis; the position prioritizes management and leadership, while requiring the ability to read and guide work across multiple languages (Python, .NET, SQL, and legacy 4GL/domain-specific languages) to keep delivery moving.

This is an onsite position at our Kaiser Aluminum Spokane Washington plant.

• Salary Range: $110,000-$135,000 annually (depending on experience)
• Medical, dental, vision, and basic life insurance (including spouse and children) with modest payroll deductions
• 10 paid holidays per year
• 3 weeks of vacation
• Supplemental leave (used with Washington Paid Family & Medical Leave)
• 401(k) with company match
• Quarterly bonus structure

• Business engagement & value:
  Deliver pragmatic solutions with visible KPIs (cycle time, uptime, user satisfaction, ROI; manufacturing metrics like throughput/scrap/FPY).
• Sustain & stabilize:
  Reliable daily operations with clear SLOs/SLAs, disciplined change management, and clean audit evidence.
• Plan within constraints:
  Tech-stack roadmap that fits budget and staffing, reduces technical debt, and lands releases on time.
• Enterprise integration: ERP ↔ MES and adjacent systems remain aligned through healthy, monitored interfaces/middleware; dependable data flows.
• Delivery velocity & quality:
  Shorter lead time for changes, higher deployment frequency, improved test coverage, fewer defects.

• Proactively engage on-site: walk the floor, surface opportunities, lead discovery, define success metrics, and keep stakeholders aligned.
• Lead the team: set goals, allocate work, coach developer team, run standups/reviews, enforce definition-of-done, and build a reusable knowledge base.
• Stakeholder & vendor management: communicate trade-offs plainly, track benefits, hold partners to outcomes, and report status to the Controller and business leads.

• Reliability first: own availability, capacity, and support processes for ERP/finance/operations applications (including legacy/on-prem).
• ERP/MES coordination: maintain clear boundaries and data handoffs (orders, BOM/routings, confirmations, materials, quality, inventory).
• Middleware/interfaces: operate and improve APIs, ETL/ELT, EDI, and/or iPaaS with monitoring, alerting, and robust error handling.
• OT partnership: coordinate with Operations Technology on MES/historian changes, maintenance windows, and safety/cyber constraints.
• Pragmatic modernization: stabilize and extend where it pays; replace selectively; make budget-minded build‑vs‑buy decisions.
• Roadmap ownership: maintain a value-ranked portfolio balancing quick wins and strategic change; sequence by impact, risk, and cost.
• Project delivery: plan and deliver upgrades and integrations (REST/Graph
  
  QL, SQL, ETL/ELT, EDI, iPaaS); manage risks, milestones, RAID logs, and communications.
• Azure Dev Ops ownership: define branching/PR policies, CI/CD pipelines, environments/releases, and dashboards; trace work items → commits/PRs → builds/releases.
• Own value tracking and TCO/ROI: maintain a value-ranked backlog, quantify benefits, and adjust sequencing based on evidence.
• Enablement tools: apply LLMs/AI as appropriate (PR assist, test scaffolding, doc/search) with simple guardrails and outcome metrics.

• Quality & reliability: increase unit/integration test coverage, reduce change‑fail rate, maintain…