Pilot Plant Lead

Haleon • Augusta, GA

6d • $150,463 - $206,886 • Onsite

About The Position

The Richmond Pilot Plant is a critical enabler of Haleon’s innovation agenda—accelerating the development and delivery of new products while safeguarding continuity at our manufacturing sites. By providing agile, high-quality in-house development and scale-up capability, the pilot plant maximizes the return on our innovation investment and reduces reliance on external partners.
As Lead, Pilot Plant Operations, this role sets the benchmark for operational excellence across the facility. The Lead will cultivate a high-performance culture grounded in GMP and EHS discipline, continuous improvement and right-first-time execution. With end-to-end accountability for pilot plant availability, the Lead will ensure the Richmond Pilot Plant consistently delivers both GMP and non-GMP batches that enable process development and process improvement, scale-up, registration batches, and product supply for clinical and consumer studies.
The lead will partner closely with Innovation Leads and the Scale-Up team to shape the pilot plant master plan and define a forward-looking capital investment roadmap—evolving today’s capabilities while building what’s required for the future pipeline.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Chemistry, Pharmaceutical Sciences, or a related technical field.
• 10+ years of technical experience in formulation, packaging, manufacturing technologies, validation, or technical operations within regulated consumer healthcare, pharmaceutical, FMCG, or related environments.
• Strong end-to-end product lifecycle experience across innovation execution, technical transfer, product maintenance, optimization, simplification, and technical readiness.
• Proven ability to lead teams and technical programs and resolve technical risks
• Strong matrix leadership and stakeholder influence across Quality, R&D, Manufacturing, Category, and global technical teams.

Nice To Haves

• Master’s degree in Engineering, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Business, or a related field.
• Operational Excellence, Lean, Six Sigma, or continuous improvement experience.
• Ability to translate Category and OU strategy into prioritization and delivery
• Experience making sound decisions in regulated environments while balancing speed, compliance, quality, cost, supply resilience, and long-term technical stewardship.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end operations across the Richmond GMP warehouse, pilot plant manufacturing and primary packaging; partner with project teams and Scale-Up engineers to develop and deliver schedules aligned to Haleon innovation priorities.
• Manage and develop a team of scientists and technicians (11), ensuring clear accountability, capability building, and performance excellence.
• Collaborate with innovation teams, scale-up engineers, and manufacturing sites to anticipate future capability needs and shape the capital investment plan required to deliver them.
• Provide leadership and governance for the execution of pilot plant capital projects, ensuring delivery to scope, timeline, cost and quality.
• Maximize utilization and asset performance by designing and implementing programs that optimize capacity, efficiency and throughput across the pilot plant and associated assets.
• Ensure sustained GMP compliance and inspection readiness in partnership with Site Quality, maintaining audit-ready standards for internal and external inspections.
• Drive operational readiness across warehouse, pilot plant and packaging areas—ensuring on-time availability of qualified equipment, facilities and trained personnel; ensure facilities and equipment are qualified, maintained and controlled for GMP use.
• Recruit, onboard and capability-build to ensure the team has the skills and expertise required to safely deliver all operational and project demands.
• Champion EHS excellence, adhering to global standards; act as Duty Holder for Workplace Transport and Warehouse Safety and as SME for machinery and process safety.

Benefits

• competitive pay
• generous 401(k) plan
• tuition reimbursement
• time off programs
• 6 months paid parental leave
• healthcare programs where the company pays for the majority of your medical coverage for you and your family
• discretionary bonus based on the achievement of key business performance
• other incentive/recognition programs

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior