Refractory Specialist

CENTURY ALUMINUM•Robards, KY

just now

About The Position

The Bake Furnace Refractory Specialist is responsible for the long-term integrity, reliability, and performance of the plant’s carbon bake furnace refractory systems. This role serves as the plant’s primary subject-matter expert for refractory systems, including flue wall health, repair planning, material selection, vendor evaluation, and refractory performance monitoring.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in one of the following fields preferred: Engineering, Materials Science, Industrial Technology, Mechanical or Manufacturing discipline. Equivalent experience in refractory systems may be considered.
The incumbent should have experience with industrial furnace systems or refractory materials, and maintenance planning, materials management, or industrial process systems.
Required core competencies also include the following: Analytical Problem Solving, Field Observation and Diagnostics, Long-Term Planning and Forecasting, Technical Documentation, Vendor and Contractor Management, Safety Leadership, Data Analysis and Software Systems.

Nice To Haves

Experience supervising maintenance crews is preferred.

Responsibilities

Serve as the plant’s technical authority for bake furnace refractory systems, ensuring long-term structural integrity, maintenance planning, and making decisions which support reliability and production capability.
Conduct daily furnace inspections, diagnose refractory conditions, and track trends in system health, damage progression, repairs, and lifecycle.
Manage and maintain the refractory tracking system, ensuring accurate data entry, validation of data against field observations, and continuous improvement of system functionality.
Establish repair priorities, develop short- and long-term maintenance plans and targets, and guide furnace repair and rebuild planning based on data and field conditions.
Forecast, procure, and manage refractory materials and inventory to support ongoing and planned maintenance activities.
Evaluate suppliers and materials, collaborate with vendors on product testing, and provide feedback to improve refractory performance and reliability, while maintaining good working relationships with suppliers.
Supervise and schedule the brick crew, coordinating maintenance activities and ensuring safe, high-quality work execution aligned with production needs.
Promote and enforce safe work practices, conduct safety meetings, and support incident investigations and continuous safety improvement.
Develop and deliver training programs, maintain compliance records for crew members, and write/update safe work procedures and technical documentation.
Monitor repair quality, perform root cause analysis of failures, lead initiatives to improve refractory performance, analyze laboratory and material evaluations, and produce reports on refractory condition.
Coordinate refractory work with production, maintenance, and contractors, including scheduling, logistics, execution, and waste removal.
Maintain detailed production and maintenance records, generate reports, and prepare documentation for audits, studies, and improvement initiatives.
Track refractory spending, manage material budgets, and support cost control efforts in collaboration with purchasing and plant leadership.