Director of Plant Operations & Commercial Scale-Up

Nabors•Tomball, TX

2d•Onsite

About The Position

Hexegen has proven its process for producing high-purity, graphene-class carbon nanomaterials. Our Tomball prototype reactors validated both product quality and the repeatability of the reaction. The next build takes that proven chemistry, automates it, and scales it — and it is designed from the outset to be replicated, so that the plant we build in Tomball becomes the template for Hexegen facilities anywhere in the world. We are hiring a Site Director to lead that work. You will be Hexegen's senior leader on the project: representing our interests through design, construction, and commissioning alongside our engineering partner, then running the facility as a safe, reliable, high-yield operation. Build it once, build it right, and you have built the standard for every Hexegen plant that follows. Hexegen is a Texas-based advanced materials company and a subsidiary of Nabors Industries (NYSE: NBR). We are commercializing the Hexite™ platform — a proprietary process for producing high-purity, graphene-class nanomaterials at scale. For twenty years, graphene has been chemistry's most over-promised category. The properties are extraordinary — strength, conductivity, surface area no other material approaches — but the field has stalled on a recurring set of problems: processes that don't scale, products that aren't pure, feedstocks that aren't economic, and chemistries you can't tune to a specific application. Hexite™ addresses all four. Our Tomball prototype has been producing high-purity material since 2024 from readily available, low-cost inputs, with process control tight enough that we can engineer the molecule for the application at hand. That tunability is what opens the market: Hexite™ materials target thermoplastics, construction, energy storage, automotive, aviation, defense, and medical applications, with hydrogen technologies on the roadmap.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering (strongly preferred) or a closely related engineering discipline.
Demonstrated experience taking a chemical or materials process from prototype, pilot, or demonstration scale through the design, construction, commissioning, and startup of a commercial production facility — and then operating it. This is the single most important qualification; we care about having done it more than about years served.
Experience serving as the owner's representative to an external engineering or EPC firm on a capital project of meaningful scale, including budget, schedule, and change-order accountability.
Deep working knowledge of Process Safety Management and of chemical process operations in a regulated environment.
Experience leading multi-functional site teams — operations, maintenance, quality, and EHS — including hiring and building an organization from a small base.
Track record of building maintenance and reliability programs, not inheriting them.
Comfort with ambiguity, incomplete data, and a small team. This is a startup with a corporate parent, not a mature plant with a corporate staff behind it.
Effective people, business, and operations leader with the ability to build organizational capability and drive results.
Ability to attract, develop and retain top talent; setting clear expectations; holding leaders and employees accountable for performance, safety and operational excellence; fostering a culture of engagement and continuous improvement.
Successful highly performing team that delivers safe, reliable, and efficient operations while strategically supporting the Company’s growth objectives.

Nice To Haves

Experience with a replicated or standardized plant design — modular, multi-site, or copy-exact builds — or with technology transfer from one site to another.
Experience with engineered nanomaterials, carbon black, specialty carbons, catalysts, fine powders, or other high-value solids handling.
Experience commissioning a highly automated or continuous process with modern control systems.
Experience building a quality system to customer qualification standards (ISO 9001, IATF 16949, AS9100, or similar) for demanding end markets.
P&L or site business ownership.
Prior experience in a venture- or corporate-backed startup environment.

Responsibilities

Act as owner's representative to the engineering/EPC partner: hold stage-gate and design reviews, approve scope, and protect operability and maintainability in the design.
Own the owner's scope of the capital project — budget, schedule, contract and change-order control, and vendor and long-lead equipment management.
Participate in and drive closure of PHA/HAZOP, LOPA, and layer-of-protection decisions; ensure Management of Change is in place before the first modification, not after.
Own factory acceptance testing, site acceptance testing, turnover packages, punch list, and pre-startup safety review (PSSR).
Build the operating organization ahead of mechanical completion: hire and train operators and maintenance staff, write SOPs, and stand up the CMMS, quality system, and training program.
Lead commissioning and startup, establishing a safe, reliable path to the plant’s designed production capacity.
Hold the engineering partner to a design that is replicable, not bespoke: standardized equipment selections, defensible vendor choices, and documented design basis and rationale.
Drive standardization of the control system, instrumentation, and automation philosophy so that a future site inherits a working configuration rather than starting over.
Own the completeness and quality of the design and operating package — P&IDs, equipment specifications, SOPs, training materials, quality methods, and maintenance plans — to the standard required for another team to build and run this plant without you.
Identify which elements of the design must be fixed across all sites and which can flex to local feedstock, utilities, permitting, and labor conditions.
Capture lessons learned during construction, commissioning, and startup in a form the next site can actually use.
Own all site operations: safety, production, engineering, maintenance, quality, laboratory, warehouse, and site services.
Deliver on cost, yield, throughput, on-time delivery, and product consistency against customer specifications.
Establish preventive and predictive maintenance, reliability programs, spares strategy, and asset management.
Drive continuous improvement — root cause analysis, corrective action, standardized work, and process optimization — and feed proven improvements back into the reference design.
Own the site operating and capital budgets; provide accurate forecasting and performance reporting.
Build the leadership bench and workforce plan to support scale-up in place and, in time, to seed the teams that will start up future sites.
Build and lead a reporting-positive safety culture: high near-miss and hazard reporting, active stop-work authority, and visible leadership in the field.
Own regulatory compliance for the site across OSHA, EPA, NFPA, and TCEQ requirements, including Process Safety Management where applicable to our process.
Own the occupational health program for engineered nanomaterial exposure: containment and engineering controls for dry powder handling and transfer, exposure assessment, respiratory protection, and medical surveillance.
Lead the site safety program, including incident investigation and corrective action to closure with verification of effectiveness.