Director of Plant Operations & Commercial Scale-Up

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.

What You'll Bring

Required

- 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.

Preferred

- 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.

What This Role Is Not

You will not have a corporate engineering department, a staffed EHS function, or a deep bench to delegate to on day one — you will be building those. You will not be doing the detailed design; our engineering partner does that, and your job is to make sure what they design is a plant we can safely run for twenty years and repeat somewhere else. And in the first year, a meaningful share of your time will be spent in design reviews, vendor shops, and hiring rather than on a production floor.

Working Conditions

- On-site role in Tomball, Texas. Relocation assistance is available.
- Travel during the build phase to vendor facilities and the engineering partner's offices, concentrated around design reviews and equipment acceptance testing.
- Regular presence in manufacturing and laboratory areas requiring PPE, including respiratory protection subject to fit testing and medical clearance.
- Ability to respond to plant issues outside normal business hours, particularly during commissioning and startup.

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