Head of Manufacturing

Job description

**Empower Your Future:** At MetOx International, we’re pioneering the next era of energy security and abundance through breakthrough superconducting technology. As Head of Manufacturing, you’ll join a dynamic team committed to strengthening the world’s energy systems to make them more resilient, efficient, and reliable. Based at our global headquarters in Houston, TX, the Head of Manufacturing leads the manufacturing organization and owns the operating system that converts MetOx's advanced technology into safe, reliable, repeatable, and scalable production. This leader has responsibility for Production, Maintenance, Environmental Health & Safety (EHS), Quality, and Yield, integrating these functions into one disciplined manufacturing organization with clear priorities, metrics, accountability, and operating rhythms. The Head of Manufacturing brings the rigor of semiconductor, superconducting, advanced materials, or similarly complex manufacturing environments to MetOx's rapidly scaling operations. This leader establishes the systems, processes, organizational capabilities, and culture required to improve yield, increase equipment reliability, expand capacity, control cost, and consistently deliver against production commitments. This role requires an executive who combines strategic manufacturing leadership with a strong presence on the factory floor. The successful leader uses data to drive decisions, creates accountability across functions and levels, develops strong leaders, and builds a culture where safety, quality, yield, equipment performance, and production execution operate as an integrated system. **Key Responsibilities** **Manufacturing Strategy and Operational Leadership** - Rapidly assesses the existing pilot line team, closes critical gaps, and establishes clear accountability across all functions. - Develops and executes a manufacturing strategy calibrated to MetOx's R&D/manufacturing hybrid reality, with an aggressive roadmap toward repeatable, high-yield commercial production. - Establishes clear KPIs, tiered operating reviews, and escalation protocols, driving accountability and consistent execution across the organization. - Develops site-level organizational structures, hiring plans, and operational governance frameworks for new or expanding manufacturing locations, ensuring each site launches with the right leadership and systems in place before production begins. - Builds organizational capabilities and systems that support growth and future site expansion. - Leads from the front, maintaining a highly visible, active presence on the manufacturing floor. **Manufacturing Excellence and SPC** - Introduces and enforces semiconductor-grade manufacturing discipline: standard work, Statistical Process Control (SPC), process capability analysis, DOE, tiered daily management, visual management, and structured problem-solving. - Uses SPC and statistical methods as primary tools to identify variation sources, drive process capability improvement, and deliver measurable yield gains with speed and precision. - Ensures chronic issues have clear ownership, root-cause analysis, and timely corrective action through resolution. - Partners with Engineering and R&D to establish manufacturing readiness criteria, define process windows, and execute production-readiness qualification with rigorous change control. - Builds the data infrastructure needed to enable fact-based decision-making across the organization. - Drives improvements in cycle time, labor productivity, material utilization, equipment utilization, yield, and OEE. **R&D Partnership and Hybrid Operations** - Serves as the primary manufacturing partner to R&D, translating experimental processes into stable, repeatable production. - Applies engineering first principles to manufacturing challenges; comfortable engaging with process data, deposition chemistry, equipment physics, and materials characterization directly. - Defines and enforces clear manufacturing readiness criteria; holds the line on when a process is production-ready versus still in development. - Drives yield as a shared, relentlessly tracked organizational priority across Manufacturing and R&D. **Production and Delivery** - Leads Production to consistently achieve manufacturing plans and customer delivery commitments. - Establishes disciplined production planning and execution across shifts, processes, and manufacturing areas. - Drives accountability for schedule attainment, throughput, cycle time, work-in-process, scrap, rework, and labor productivity. - Ensures effective shift handoffs, escalation processes, staffing models, and production reporting across multi-shift operations. - Identifies bottlenecks and production constraints and mobilizes cross-functional resources to resolve them without delay. - Aligns staffing, training, material availability, equipment capability, and production priorities to meet current and future manufacturing requirements. **Maintenance and Equipment Reliability** - Leads Maintenance with a focus on equipment reliability, reducing chronic downtime while strengthening preventive and predictive maintenance systems. - Establishes clear equipment reliability metrics and accountability, including uptime, MTBF, MTTR, and preventive maintenance completion. - Partners with Equipment and Process Engineering to identify systemic equipment issues and qualify new equipment into sustained operations. **Quality & Yield** - Leads Quality and Yield as the central manufacturing priorities building yield roadmaps with quantified milestones and drives root-cause analysis through SPC, Pareto, and process capability tools. - Builds quality and yield into manufacturing processes, establishing clear ownership and accountability for process control across the organization. - Ensures disciplined nonconformance management, deviation handling, change control, documentation, and traceability processes are in place and enforced. **EHS & Manufacturing Risk** - Leads EHS and establishes safety as a core operating requirement throughout the manufacturing organization. - Maintains strong operational controls around chemicals, gases, vacuum equipment, high-temperature processes, electrical systems, and material handling. - Ensures full compliance with applicable environmental, health, safety, and regulatory requirements across all operating locations. **Leadership & Organization Development** - Grows a lean, early-stage team into a high-performing manufacturing organization — assesses talent quickly, makes clear decisions, and recruits to fill critical gaps. - Leads hiring and onboarding of site-level manufacturing leadership at new locations — building teams from the ground up and establishing accountability structures before production begins. - Builds a leadership team that operates with urgency, takes ownership, and resolves problems at the appropriate level. - Develops frontline leadership capable of sustaining multi-shift operations and significant organizational growth across multiple sites. - Creates a culture of ownership, transparency, continuous improvement, and disciplined execution. - Partners effectively with Engineering, R&D, Supply Chain, Finance, HR, and executive leadership to align manufacturing priorities with company objectives. **Minimum Qualifications:** - Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Materials Science, Manufacturing, Operations, or a related technical discipline. - 15 years of progressive manufacturing or operations experience, including significant leadership responsibility for plant, production, or manufacturing operations. - Experience leading multiple manufacturing functions and a sizable multi-level organization in a technically complex manufacturing environment. - Experience in semiconductors, superconductors, advanced materials, electronics, thin-film manufacturing, specialty chemicals, battery manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, or another comparable high-precision manufacturing industry. - Demonstrated success building disciplined manufacturing organizations and improving safety, quality, yield, throughput, equipment reliability, cost, and delivery performance. - Experience leading multi-shift manufacturing operations and developing leaders at the manager and director level. - Demonstrated experience scaling remote manufacturing operations, implementing production controls, and establishing sustainable continuous improvement systems. - Experience partnering with Engineering and R&D to transition technologies, equipment, or processes from development into sustained manufacturing. **Preferred Qualifications:** - Advanced degree in Engineering, Materials Science, Manufacturing, Operations, Business, or a related discipline. - Executive-level manufacturing leadership experience in semiconductor fabrication, semiconductor capital equipment, superconducting materials, thin-film deposition, or advanced-materials manufacturing. - Experience with MOCVD, CVD, PVD, sputtering, plating, vacuum processing, thermal processing, continuous web or roll-to-roll manufacturing, or related technologies. - Experience scaling manufacturing operations from development or low-volume production into stable, high-volume commercial manufacturing. - Experience commissioning, qualifying, ramping, and sustaining complex production equipment and manufacturing lines. - Experience leading Quality, Yield, Maintenance, EHS, or similarly integrated manufacturing functions in addition to Production. - Experience implementing Lean manufacturing, Six Sigma, SPC, OEE, 5S, tiered daily management, or comparable operational-excellence systems. - Experience operating in a high-growth organization where manufacturing technology, equipment, processes, and organizational structures continue to mature rapidly. **Knowledge, Skills, & Abilities:** - Deep knowledge of complex manufacturing operations, including production, equipment reliability, quality, yield, EHS, capacity planning, and continuous improvement. - Strong understanding of the manufacturing rigor and process control required in semiconductor, superconducting, advanced-materials, or other high-precision manufacturing environments. - Ability to build and lead a disciplined manufacturing organization with clear operating rhythms, metrics, accountability, and escalation processes. - Ability to use data to identify constraints, solve complex manufacturing problems, and drive sustained improvements in safety, quality, yield, throughput, cost, and equipment performance. - Ability to translate business objectives into manufacturing strategies, priorities, capacity plans, and executable operating plans. - Strong leadership and organizational development skills with the ability to build, coach, and hold accountable high-performing leaders and teams. - Strong cross-functional leadership skills with the ability to align Manufacturing, Engineering, R&D, Supply Chain, and other functions around shared priorities. - Strong executive communication, judgment, and decision-making skills with the ability to operate effectively from the manufacturing floor through executive leadership. **Physical Demands**: This position requires sitting at a desk and viewing a computer screen for extended periods while working or performing other office tasks. Ability to move around the office, including occasional standing, walking, and bending to retrieve documents, attend meetings, or use office equipment. Some light lifting may be required, up to 20 lbs. MetOx is proud to offer competitive benefits including: - Health, dental, and vision available on the first day of employment - 401(k) match - Paid parental leave & adoption assistance - Educational reimbursement - And more! *We are an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.*