Hot End Manager

Role Overview

Responsibilities

• Provide leadership and direction for all Hot End operations.
• Drive safety culture and compliance with environmental, health, safety, and regulatory requirements.
• Lead and develop supervisors, engineers, and operators through coaching and capability building.
• Improve safety, quality, throughput, yield, energy consumption, cost, furnace performance, and equipment reliability.
• Lead root cause analysis and corrective actions for process, quality, equipment, and operational issues.
• Partner with Maintenance, Quality, Engineering, Supply Chain, and Commercial teams.
• Support capital projects, technology implementation, process upgrades, and operational readiness.
• Participate in MOC, PHA, FMEA, and other risk assessment activities.
• Develop succession plans and organizational capability using data-driven decision-making.
• Travel may be required for training, benchmarking, startup support, technical reviews, vendor visits, and manufacturing network activities.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in Chemical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Materials Engineering, Industrial Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
• Experience leading manufacturing operations in a continuous process industry.
• Experience leading and developing supervisors, engineers, and frontline operations personnel.
• Demonstrated ability to improve safety, quality, productivity, and cost performance.
• Strong knowledge of float manufacturing processes, process control systems, and operational excellence principles.
• Proven problem-solving, troubleshooting, decision-making, communication, collaboration, and influencing skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in float glass manufacturing.
• Experience managing Furnace, Tin Bath, Lehr, or Batch House operations.
• Knowledge of glass melting, combustion systems, glass forming, refractory management, and thermal process optimization.
• Experience leading furnace campaigns, major repairs, rebuilds, or cold repair projects.
• Experience managing departmental budgets and capital projects.
• Track record of measurable value creation through operational improvements, yield enhancement, quality improvements, and energy reduction.

Company Context