Job Title: Plant Operations Lead
Location: Various UK with potential for international -(On site in Norfolk with travel included to the London office)
Salary: 90-105k

Full Time/Part Time: Full Time

Benefits:

• Employee Share Option Scheme
• Above industry standard holiday (30 days vs 22-25)
• Close office over Xmas where possible
• £500 personal development grant every year
• Unlimited mental health support
• 3 months of equal Paternity or Maternity leave
• Monthly rewilding donation on your behalf

About Mission Zero Technologies:

MZT is an early-stage start-up pioneering a breakthrough Direct Air carbon Capture (DAC) technology that can scrub CO2 from the air using a fraction of the energy compared to incumbent technologies developed by the likes of Carbon Engineering and Climeworks. In the past two and a half years, MZT has evolved its technology from concept to pilot plant scale, successfully raising over £8m from a mixture of private and government funding. MZT’s technology is a hybrid of approaches, combining efficient solution-phase capture of CO2 with a continuous and compact electrochemical separation technology.

Mission Zero and its work is guided by its principles of bold curiosity, problem solving acumen and hope for the future. We strive to realise a world where humanity has new tools to fight climate change, remove CO2 permanently from the atmosphere and produce everyday products such as concrete blocks or fuels from atmospheric carbon emissions. To do this we need to realise a decentralised Gt supply chain for CO2 sourced directly from the atmosphere.

The opportunity:

You have the opportunity to join MZT at a pivotal point in our company's history - our transition from an early-stage R&D startup into a product offering, revenue-generating company poised to rapidly scale our direct-air capture technology across the world.

MZT is hiring a Plant Operations Lead with advanced skills in chemical plant operation and equipment reliability improvement programmes, ideally with experience in absorption, scrubbing, gas-liquid separation systems, and/or electrodialytic processes. In this role you will lead an operations team to demonstrate our first technology deployment at industrial scale.

Inheriting the MZT product modules designed and built by our delivery team, you will manage our pilot plant experimental plans and learn how to optimise the technology for best-in-class operation.

You will grow with our technology offering to span units of 50 - 2500 teCO2/year capacities within the next year across various geographies. This will require you to lead in exemplification of safe and effective operational standards while demonstrating clear leadership of the operational team to include rotational shifts of existing MZT science & engineering staff members.

The role is a site-based role with regular but limited time at our offices in East London. Locations for you to lead will expand as the company grows, offering you significant career development opportunities. You will have occasional visits to suppliers and fabricators to witness e.g. factory acceptance tests before receiving the MZT modules from the engineering delivery team.

Our vision for our early stage employees is that they own the business with us (literally), grow it with us and become part of the collective story of Mission Zero, taking a catalytic role in its early history and the fight against climate change.

What you’ll be responsible for:

• Leading MZT site operations at our first industrial Pilot Plant, Norfolk - the UK’s first ever deployment of carbon negative DAC technology
• Ensuring the safe, planned, and progressive start-up for MZT modules
• Overseeing operations during start-up and later day-to-day operations
• Repeating role at further plants at a time interval which depends on need and success of pilot plant remote operations
• Stewardship, standard setting and exemplification of MZT at-site Health & Safety culture
• Overseeing operational execution of the pilot plant experimental plan in liaison with the CTO
• Reporting back to the Technology team on unit performances and areas for product improvement
• Troubleshooting issues that arise, with good record keeping for required interventions to be passed back to the product improvement team
• Overseeing and organising maintenance routines
• Stewarding all formal site visitors and guests
• Creation and introduction of visitor and employee MZT site induction programme

The Ideal Candidate will possess:

• Extensive experience in operations especially commissioning and start-up of a variety of process plants, in multiple locations, under varying conditions
• Experience leading teams in challenging environments
• Science / Engineering Degree in suitable discipline

• A passion for optimising technical solutions for the world's greatest challenges
• >10 years experience in chemical industry operational settings
• Various safety accreditations e.g. NEBOSH
• Lean operational certificate, e.g. six sigma or equivalent
• Continuous improvement training / programme experience
• Significant Reliability, Availability, Maintenance / OEE understanding
• Evidenced strong leadership skills, demonstrated exemplary clear communication skills
• Good understanding of chemical, electrical, mechanical portions of various unit operations such as gas-liquid contacting, water treatment, membrane processes

Also desirable:

• Experience running Research & Development pilot facilities
• Mechanical / inter-discipline focus in undergraduate / postgraduate studies
• Experience across multiple processing industries
• Demonstrated experience working with absorption, scrubbing, continuous gas-liquid systems and/or electrodialysis
• Good understanding of hazard and risk identification
• Basic understanding of fundamental electrochemistry principles and background industrial chemistry knowledge
• Familiarity with processes handling CO2