Plant Operations Director

Plant Operations Director

Cold Steppe Inc. Stuttgart, Arkansas, United States

Cold Steppe is building a biomass-to-biochar platform that turns agricultural waste, starting with rice hulls from Arkansas's farming communities, into biochar: a carbon-rich material that improves soil health, sequesters carbon, retains water, and supports food system resilience. Our first facility, AR-1, sits in Stuttgart, Arkansas, the heart of rice country. It's a highly automated, continuous-process operation, and it's the foundation for how Cold Steppe expands across new sites and new regions.

We're an early-stage company moving fast — the people who join us now will help define how we operate, what we stand for, and how we scale. See what Cold Steppe is building:

The Plant Operations Director is Cold Steppe's operational leader at AR-1, and its most visible face in Stuttgart. Reporting directly to the Co-Founder and COO,you'llown everything that happens inside the facility, and how Cold Steppe shows up in the community around it, including:

• Safety and environmental compliance: building a culture where hazards get surfaced before they become incidents, not just a compliance checkbox
• Production and operational performance: throughput, yield, quality, and uptime on a continuous, automated production line
• Maintenance and reliability: a practical preventive, predictive, and corrective maintenance program
• Quality and continuous improvement: improvement built into the operating rhythm, not treated as a side project
• Operating budget and cost management: significant ownership of the facility's financials, tied to operational decisions
• Hiring, developing, and leading a high-performing team: building one of the most technically interesting manufacturing work forces in the Stuttgart area from the ground up
• Community engagement and workforce development: you'rethe face of Cold Steppe locally – chamberof commerce, schools, site tours for researchers, partners, and investors
• R&D and technical curiosity: AR-1 is Cold Steppe's flagship facility and an active site of learning; new process configurations and product applications get worked out here alongside regular operations, and your fluency in the process feeds that work rather than protecting production from it

You'llwork closely with the founders and play a direct role inshaping howfuture facilities are designed and operated.

Build relationships with the operations team and community partners

Learn the production process and operating systems

Establish daily operating rhythm and performance metrics

Reinforce a world-class safety culture

Deliver safe, reliable production

Improve uptime, throughput, and operating efficiency

Build scalable operating procedures and maintenance practices

Develop a strong, engaged workforce

Help create the operational blueprint for future Cold Steppe facilities

We're looking for someone genuinely curious, deeply capable, and ready to do something that hasn't been done before in this community,someone who has built real things, led real teams, and solved real problems in an industrial environment, and still asks questions like they're new to the field.

Engineering degree required; equivalent technical manufacturing experience considered case-by-case
15+ years of manufacturing, plant, or operations leadership experience

Experience managing a 24/7 continuous manufacturing operation

Strong leadership of frontline production and maintenance teams

Thermodynamics and power operations background — particularly important as we scale to Alabama sites

Mechanical and/or electrical background

Experience with safety, environmental compliance, and operational excellence

Budget and cost management responsibility

Preventive and predictive maintenance experience

Continuous improvement mindset (Lean, Six Sigma, TPM, or similar is a plus)
Public-facing, community, or educational experience is a meaningful plus — coaching, teaching, workforce development, or anything that required explaining complex things to people whodidn'talready know…