Manager Application Operations (Salinas, CA)
About The Position
Investing in You, join a 100-year-old, family-owned leader in Ag – and grow with us! Wilbur-Ellis invests heavily in our employees by offering skill development and training, competitive compensation and benefits, and a tradition of promoting from within for a broad range of career opportunities. And we foster a supportive, people-first work environment. “We know the confidence gap can get in the way of meeting spectacular candidates, so please don’t hesitate to apply — we’d love to hear from you.” General Purpose and Scope of Position: The Application Operations Manager leads the safe, timely, and efficient application of fertilizers and crop protection products across agricultural field operations. This role is accountable for building and sustaining a culture of safety, operational discipline, and continuous improvement while ensuring customer commitments are met in a highly regulated, peak-season environment.
Requirements
- Extensive experience in agricultural chemical application operations
- Deep understanding of safety, risk, and regulatory requirements related to fertilizer and pesticide application
- Proven experience managing managers and leading large, distributed teams
- Working knowledge of spray controller systems, dispatch and scheduling tools, fleet tracking, mobile field applications, and ERP systems
- Ability to lead calmly and decisively in high-risk, time-sensitive environments
Nice To Haves
- You’re able to improve customer satisfaction through ensuring reliable, on-time application
- You have a strong focus on reducing safety incidents and operational disruptions
- You know how to increase efficiency, consistency, and accountability across field operations
- You can lead the team to adopt processes and tools that support safe execution
Responsibilities
- Lead day and night field application operations in a 24/7, on-call environment.
- Foster a safety-first culture, ensuring compliance with all regulatory and company standards for agricultural chemical application.
- Manage and develop 4–6 direct reports, overseeing a total team of approximately 70 employees.
- Act as a player-coach, providing hands-on leadership during peak season, incidents, and operational disruptions.
- Ensure effective use of systems that support field execution, including scheduling and dispatch, spray controller software, fleet/GPS tracking, mobile field tools, and ERP systems.
- Partner cross-functionally with Sales, Safety, Compliance, Finance, Retail Store Managers, and external vendors.
- Lead incident response, investigations, and continuous improvement efforts to reduce accidents, errors, and inefficiencies.
- Align operational capacity with customer timing, seasonal demand, and environmental conditions.
- Manage the operational P&L, expenses, capital expenditures, budget, and gain approval for any large purchases needed for operations.
Benefits
- This position is eligible for an annual discretionary bonus and vacation, holidays, health, dental, vision, mental health, and retirement plan participation, including an employer contribution of up to 7% into your 401(k).
- Employee Benefits: Take home a competitive salary and benefits you and your family deserve – from 401(K) matching, medical, dental and vision coverage, paid vacation, work-life balance and more.
- Talent Development: When you grow, we all grow. We’ll help you forge your own career pathway through continuous learning and skills development, mentorship programs, growth opportunities, business resource groups and career coaching.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Manager
Education Level
No Education Listed
