Senior Director of Refinery Operations
industrial_energy_operations › Refinery · M6 — M6 — Vice President · Management
Senior executive leader overseeing all refinery operations, production performance, and manufacturing strategy across one or more processing facilities.
Median pay · United States · annual
$241,631 USD
▲ +182.2% vs M1 on this ladder
Typical range ()
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Key statistics
The identity block — every fact is canon, none is generated.
6 of 8
Track
Management
Family rungs priced
M1 · M2 · M3 · M4 · M5 · M6
Coordinates
3 / 4 spaces
pay@2 · 2026-07
What this role is
Senior executive leader overseeing all refinery operations, production performance, and manufacturing strategy across one or more processing facilities. At the Vice President (M6) level, the role owns a major function or division, enterprise priorities and external factors, and drives division-wide / organization-wide. Leads the leadership of a division.
What this level does
- Lead refinery operations across multiple sites or the full operating division through senior operations directors, setting long-term operating and reliability strategy
- Shape multi-year operating philosophy, process-safety culture and automation/digitalization direction affecting the enterprise's operating success
- Negotiate with executives on critical matters — capital allocation for operations, major turnaround scope, feedstock and product-slate strategy — as a policy influencer
- Address abstract, cross-functional problems spanning operations, engineering, HSE and commercial to define the operating model for future refinery configurations
- Sponsor enterprise operations-workforce and organizational strategy, ensuring leadership depth and standardized operating discipline across departments and divisions
- Knowledge applied
- Sets long-term operating and process-safety strategy across multiple sites or the operating division, shaping operating philosophy and automation direction.
- Complexity & problem solving
- Tackles abstract, cross-functional problems defining the future operating model across operations, engineering, HSE and commercial.
- Collaboration & interaction
- Negotiates with executives on critical operations and capital matters as a policy influencer, leading through senior operations directors.
- Typical experience
- 12–15+ years with deep operations leadership across departments, sites or divisions.
Skills at this level
- Process Unit Operations
- — Directs the running of refinery process operations — distillation, absorption, extraction, cracking, reforming, alkylation, coking and isomerization — keeping temperature, pressure, flow and level within operating parameters.
- Control Room / DCS-PLC Operation
- — Oversees console operation of plant systems through a DCS/PLC interface, coordinating with field operators to run units safely and efficiently and managing alarm response.
- Process Safety and Permit-to-Work
- — Governs LOTO (lockout/tagout), permit-to-work and management-of-change for field interventions to keep running operations compliant and safe.
- Shift Continuity and Handover
- — Owns continuity across shifts through the shift log and formal handover notes covering unit status, pending permits and critical alarms.
- Product Quality Control
- — Ensures product meets specification by directing sample collection, lab turnaround and console adjustments to hold units on-spec.
- Abnormal Situation and Incident Response
- — Directs stabilization, safe rate reduction and escalation when units alarm or upset, and reports issues, malfunctions or incidents affecting operation or safety.
- Operator Qualification and Mentoring
- — Trains and signs off operators through the field-to-console progression, running structured qualification across the unit's process operations.
- Production Reporting and Performance Tracking
- — Generates production reports and tracks performance indicators (yield, reliability, off-spec events) to guide operating decisions and improvement.
- Turnaround and Intervention Coordination
- — Plans and sequences maintenance windows, isolations, drains and returns to service with maintenance and technical functions to balance continuity against equipment risk.
- Continuous Improvement in Operations
- — Applies continuous-improvement practice to plant operations, sponsoring changes to procedures, console strategies and energy/yield performance.
- Operations Workforce Planning
- — Sets staffing models, qualification standards and succession for the shift-based operating organization across units and areas.
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As of · 2026-07-30
Edition · canon-v2@2.1.0-complete
Source · canon-v2 cell + salary-benchmark (model)
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