Director of Pilot Plant Operations

Skills at this level

Pilot plant process operations and controls

— Directs execution and monitoring of pilot-scale chemical batches on instrumented and PC-based control systems, applying chemical-engineering fundamentals to keep operations within safe operating parameters.

Process safety and operating discipline

— Enforces and improves pilot plant safety practice — lock out/tag out, safe work procedures, housekeeping, and process-upset/crisis response — and authors the job procedures that govern safe batch execution.

Scale-up and technology transfer leadership

— Leads bidirectional transfer of processes from small-scale development units to the pilot plant and from pilot to commercial manufacturing, driving new-product-introduction readiness across organizational boundaries.

Process troubleshooting and optimization

— Diagnoses process deviations during scale-up, runs root-cause investigations, and applies process learning to optimize batch performance and yield at pilot scale.

GMP documentation and change management

— Authors and reviews GMP documentation, leads compliance investigations, and manages change control so pilot operations meet regulatory, quality, and technical requirements.

Process modeling and data science for scale-up

— Develops, deploys, and scales mechanistic, hybrid, or data-driven models — using PAT tools and simulation software such as Dynochem, Aspen, or gPROMS with Python/R/Julia — and integrates them into plant systems to guide process design and scale-up.

Process monitoring and data management

— Defines and leads effective process monitoring and data-management systems that capture batch performance and convert it into process learning for development and manufacturing.

Equipment readiness and maintenance coordination

— Coordinates routine and preventive maintenance of pilot plant, warehouse, and lab equipment with maintenance functions to sustain uptime and campaign readiness.

Team leadership and mentoring in pilot operations

— Runs the plant without constant oversight while coaching and mentoring operators and specialists, making agile decisions and building bench strength across shifts and campaigns.

Commercialization and economic evaluation of novel processes

— Designs and operates pilot processes to commercialize novel technologies, focusing pilot activity on enterprise-level economic and sustainability outcomes through cross-scale process analysis.