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Key statistics

The identity block — every fact is canon, none is generated.

4 of 8

Track

Management

Family rungs priced

M1 · M2 · M3 · M4 · M5 · M6

51-0000

industrial_energy_operations

Coordinates

3 / 4 spaces

pay@2 · 2026-07

What this role is

Senior manager overseeing multiple refinery units or a full processing facility, leading subordinate managers and driving operational strategy. At the Director (M4) level, the role owns a function or department, strategic priorities and cross-functional alignment, and drives function-level results. Leads managers; sets direction for the function.

What this level does

Oversee multiple process areas or a full operating block as Operations Superintendent, aligning unit operating strategy with site production and margin objectives
Set operating policy and standards for process safety, startup/shutdown and abnormal-situation management across the areas, where a lapse could jeopardize refinery operation
Manage multiple shift-supervision and area-lead teams, owning workforce planning, qualification standards and succession for the operating organization
Drive continuous-improvement programs in reliability, energy and yield across the block, sponsoring changes to operating procedures and console strategies
Represent operations in turnaround planning and major-project commissioning, defining operational readiness criteria before units return to service

Knowledge applied: Applies strategic operating and process-safety policy across multiple areas or an operating block, aligning unit strategy with site production and margin objectives.
Complexity & problem solving: Addresses strategic operating problems where lapses could jeopardize refinery operation — startup/shutdown policy, block-wide reliability and yield programs.
Collaboration & interaction: Engages senior site leaders on operating strategy and represents operations in turnaround and major-project readiness.
Typical experience: 8–10+ years with complex multi-team operating leadership across process areas.

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.

Model-authored from 16 retrieved sources, then adversarially reviewed by an independent judge panel and held to a minimum-evidence floor before publication. Distinct from corpus-extracted content, which is labelled as such.

Pay across the ladder

Refinery — median with , by . Real canon data.

National-base pricing — this family's function differential is pending review, so dollar levels are not function-adjusted (level-over-level % is unaffected).

Pay figures are modeled estimates from our market equation — level-differentiated, with honest-wide bands. They refresh as new leveling evidence lands; treat per-role dollars as directional.

Demand — is the field growing, or just turning over?

SOC 51-0000 · national

Employment growth 2019–2024, BLS OEWSobserved

-13.6%Petroleum Pump System Operators, Refinery Operators, and Gaugers · United States

40,370 → 34,860 jobs

3,200 openings / year, split into:

replacement / exits 3,298

Growth — new jobs (-3%)Exits — backfill (100%)

This occupation is projected to contract — every opening is replacing someone leaving, not net new demand.

Projected growth 2024–34 contracting: -2.8%
Growth share of hiring: -3%
Exit / retention pressure high: 100%
Openings / year: 3,200

Two quantities, kept apart: observed = employment growth differenced from two BLS OEWS vintages (what already happened); projected = BLS Employment Projections 2024–34, openings decomposed into growth + exits (growth derived from projected employment change). Neither is a pay figure.

Where this role sits — growth vs. pay

level M4 held

Demand axis is projected growth (not raw openings — that just measures churn). A curated, de-duplicated set of recognizable occupations held at this level; this role is highlighted.

Where it pays — by metro

OEWS metro median

San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA$288k

San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA$259k

Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV$239k

Boulder, CO$236k

Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA$236k

Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH$226k

Lexington Park, MD$220k

Trenton-Princeton, NJ$219k

Pay only — metro-level demand isn't in public data (it needs job postings). National median $173k; the demand-cube initiative will add growth-by-metro.

What changes across the ladder

Level-distinction canon isn't available for the adjacent levels of this profile yet.

Level differentiators

What separates M4 (M4 — Director) from the levels around it — this level only. Every word is real canon for this profile.

Scope: A function or department
Autonomy: Owns area strategy and budget
Complexity: Strategic priorities and cross-functional alignment
Impact: Function-level results
Decision rights: Owns strategy, budget, and org design for the area
Leadership: Leads managers; sets direction for the function

Full level-by-level matrix (side by side across the ladder) lives on the Ladder drill-down — not here.

Promotion

The next rung from M4 is M5.

Performance criteria for this profile render in the assessment kit →

People also watch

Nearest coordinate neighbors — same , same level. Each row's (confident / review / no match) comes from its — computed, not curated.

Profile	Key	Median	Δ structural
Chief Refining Officer	jf_refinery::E4	$389,207†	confident0.06
Senior Refinery Process Engineer	jf_refinery::P4	$109,466†	confident0.06
Advanced Refinery Operator	jf_refinery::S4	$56,408†	confident0.06
Refinery Manager	jf_refinery::M3	$120,351†	confident0.06

†National-base pricing — this family's function differential is pending review, so the dollar level is not function-adjusted.

Capability cluster

O*NET 51-8093

Core to this role. Click any element with an ⓘ for its O*NET definition. A job-specific capability model (SkillFrame) will sharpen this and add worked examples.

The Job Swatch

M4

jf_refinery::M4

Senior Refinery Manager

Refinery

The swatch is JobFrame's core primitive: a hueset deterministically by the role's superfunction, the profileKey as its color code, the level ladder, and a content fingerprint. Two swatches that look alike are alike.

Because every role carries computable coordinates, similarity, leveling, and pricing become measurable instead of arguable— the whole point of "Pantone for jobs."

Structural

structural@1

Where it sits— position in the work taxonomy + level (weighted Gower, level > function > focus).

Track: M
Superfunction: industrial_energy_operations
Function: plant_operations
Family: refinery
Universal level: 4 / 8

Content

content@2

What it's about— a fingerprint over the role's tasks & capabilities.

Two roles can sit far apart structurally yet be close in content — that gap is itself a signal.

3-state matching

How any two swatches compare — a real distance in coordinate space, resolved to a calibrated verdict (never a fake "94% match").

Mining Processing Plant · M4review0.17

Nuclear Power Plant · M4review0.17

Plant Maintenance (Energy/Mining) · M4review0.17

Plant Operations (Energy/Mining) · M4review0.17

Power Plant Management · M4review0.17

Renewables Plant · M4review0.17

Editions — frozen & versioned

structural@1live

Released 2026-06-17

content@2live

Released 2026-07-28

pay@2live

Released 2026-07-02

semantic@1live

Released 2026-07-02

Coordinates belong to a frozen, versioned edition — a coordinate computed today still means the same thing next quarter. Re-fitting issues a new edition, so comparisons are never silently redefined.

How to read this profile

Every number here is traceable — to a named source, a stated method, and an as-of date — and each value is labeled by how we know it: observed from data, computed by a model, projected forward, or governed canon. Nothing is a black box, and nothing is invented to fill a gap.

Where every number comes from

What	Source & method	Edition	State
Median pay + range	JobFrame pay equation (function base × family multiplier × level × focus differential)	pay@2	computed
Pay across the ladder	Same equation applied at each universal level	pay@2	computed
Demand — growth & openings	BLS Employment Projections; openings decomposed into growth + exits	EP 2024–34	projected
Pay by metro	BLS OEWS metropolitan medians	OEWS 2024	observed
Level distinctions	JobFrame universal-level canon (scope · autonomy · complexity · impact · decision rights · leadership)	canon	canon
Capability cluster	O*NET Knowledge / Skills / Abilities	O*NET 51-8093	computed
Coordinates	JobFrame coordinate system — structural (weighted Gower) + content fingerprint	structural@1 · content@2 · pay@2 · semantic@1	computed
Related roles	Nearest neighbors in the structural coordinate space	structural@1	computed

The principles behind the numbers

Ranges, not false precision

Pay is P10 · median · P90, never a single misleading number.

Three honest states, never a fake %

Role matches resolve to confident / review / no-match — a calibrated verdict, not a made-up percentage.

Provenance on every value

Each number carries whether it's observed, computed, projected, or canon — so you always know how much to lean on it.

Gaps shown as gaps

When a figure isn't available at the grain you need, we say so — we don't fabricate a number to fill the cell.

Frozen, versioned editions

Pay and coordinate editions are pinned, so a comparison you make today still means the same thing next quarter.

Privacy by min-N

Any aggregate over people is suppressed below a minimum count, so no individual is identifiable.

Freshness

As of2026-07-30Editioncanon-v2@2.1.0-completeSourcecanon-v2 cell + salary-benchmark (model)