Operations Manager

thyssenkrupp Materials NA•Santa Teresa, NM

19d•$91,000 - $105,000•Onsite

About The Position

The Operations Manager provides visible, hands-on leadership for a 24-hour metal distribution operation at the Santa Teresa, New Mexico facility. The role aligns people, processes, and resources to ensure safe, efficient, disciplined operations across all shifts and to deliver strong customer service, operational excellence, and business results. The manager develops supervisors and employees, fosters accountability, respect, and continuous improvement, and creates an environment where people are empowered to perform. Responsibilities span operational leadership, safety, supervisor development, people and culture, customer service, inventory and material flow, asset utilization, performance management, and continuous improvement. This is an on-site, safety-sensitive role requiring regular presence on the industrial floor and availability to support all shifts, with occasional evening, night, weekend, or urgent operational support. The hiring salary range is $91,000–$105,000 USD annually. The company offers a comprehensive benefits package, subject to eligibility and variation by job, country, union role, and company segment.

Requirements

Minimum 7 to 10 years of progressive operations leadership experience.
Minimum 3 to 5 years managing supervisors or team leaders.
Experience leading a 24-hour or multi-shift operation.
Experience in distribution, metal service centers, manufacturing, logistics, or industrial operations.
Proven ability to lead in a fast-paced, labor-intensive environment and manage supervisors, team leads, hourly employees, and support functions.
Strong safety leadership background and knowledge of industrial safety practices.
Strong understanding of warehouse, distribution, metal processing, or industrial material flow.
Ability to manage labor planning, overtime, attendance, productivity, and shift coverage.
Strong understanding of inventory control, shipping accuracy, receiving discipline, and transaction integrity.
Ability to use operational data to drive performance.
Strong communication, planning, and problem-solving skills across hourly, supervisory, management, and customer-facing functions.
Strong follow-up, escalation, and problem-closure discipline.
Demonstrated ability to hold people accountable while maintaining respect and trust.
Working knowledge of Lean Manufacturing principles and continuous improvement methodologies.
Ability to work in a fast-paced environment where priorities change quickly.
Comfort with regular floor presence and flexible hours to support a 24-hour operation.

Nice To Haves

Experience with cranes, forklifts, racking, heavy material handling, and metal product storage.
Experience in metal distribution, metal processing, copper, aluminum, steel, or industrial materials.
Experience with ERP/WMS systems.
Experience with Lean Manufacturing, continuous improvement, 5S, visual management, or daily management systems.
Experience leading union or non-union hourly teams.
Experience supporting OEM, industrial, or time-sensitive customer requirements.

Responsibilities

Lead daily operations across all shifts and set operating priorities while aligning material flow and fulfillment activities with customer requirements and available capacity.
Monitor order flow, backlog, schedule adherence, shipping performance, operating constraints, and shift handoffs.
Maintain a clean, organized, disciplined, and inspection-ready operation.
Lead a safety-first culture, enforce safety standards and legal requirements, conduct floor walks, and ensure incidents, near misses, and hazards are investigated and corrected.
Ensure safe and proper use of PPE, cranes, forklifts, lifting equipment, racking, saws, packaging stations, and other operational assets.
Set priorities for supervisors, explain the business context, coach them, support their decision-making, remove roadblocks, and build consistent leadership practices across shifts.
Build trust and engagement with employees through fairness, consistency, recognition, respectful accountability, development, cross-training, and skill progression.
Ensure customer orders are fulfilled accurately, completely, and on time; address service failures, late orders, quality issues, inventory discrepancies, and bottlenecks.
Coordinate with customer service, planning, sales, quality, purchasing, and transportation teams, and ensure customer commitments are realistic and actively managed.
Maintain accurate receiving, put-away, picking, staging, shipping, and inventory transactions; manage cycle counts and correct root causes of inventory errors.
Reduce wasted movement, double handling, congestion, damage, delays, scrap, rework, and material loss; ensure metal products are properly stored and handled.
Promote safe and efficient asset use, partner with maintenance or service providers to maximize equipment uptime, and improve layout, flow, staging, and visual management.
Establish and manage daily performance indicators and lead operating reviews with supervisors and support functions.
Use data and root-cause problem solving to address constraints, recurring problems, productivity gaps, quality issues, and service risks.
Implement continuous improvement actions, establish standard work, and ensure corrective actions are assigned, tracked, and completed.