Assistant Plant Manager

Air Liquide is Hiring for a Assistant Plant Manager in Phoenix, AZ!

We are looking for you !

• Pay: $145,000.00 - $155,000.00 per year
• Comprehensive Family Benefits: Air Liquide offers a full benefits package designed to support your whole life, including Medical, Dental, Vision, Life, AD&D, and Disability Insurance.
• Support for Parents: We offer up to 14-week paid child birth benefits to support growing families.
• Future Security: 401(k) Retirement Plan with company match, Tuition Assistance, Paid Holidays, Vacation, and Sick time.
• Early Access: Your benefits start day 1.

The Assistant Plant Manager serves as a key operational leader responsible for supporting daily facility management, driving operational efficiency, and ensuring high-level customer satisfaction. This role carries direct ownership of customer interfacing, quality program governance, and Central Utility Plant (CUP) maintenance planning and communication.

Working in close alignment with site engineering and quality leaders—including the Plant Engineers and Metrology Quality Engineers—the Assistant Plant Manager bridges technical compliance, quality assurance, and operational execution to maintain continuous plant uptime and adherence to customer requirements.

1. Customer Interfacing & Stakeholder Engagement

• Secondary Point of Contact: Serve as the backup operational liaison for strategic customer account, addressing service delivery expectations, scheduling changes, and site visit inquiries.
• Issue Resolution: Lead prompt operational response and transparent communication during supply chain disruptions, technical variances, or schedule adjustments.
• Service Level Alignment: Ensure facility operations consistently fulfill customer specifications, quality benchmarks, and delivery deadlines.

2. Quality Program Ownership

• Program Leadership: Champion site-wide adherence to Quality Management System (QMS) standards in coordination with the Customer Quality Manager
• Cross-Functional Quality Support: Collaborate with the Metrology Quality Engineers, Balaz labs, and customer incoming quality representatives to ensure seamless execution of end-to-end quality controls—including Incoming (IQC), In-Process (IPQC), and Outgoing (OQC) stages and CQC.
• Develop and implement a statistical process control system for use across 3 product lines.
• Continuous Improvement & Root Cause Analysis: Support investigations for quality non-conformances, driving Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA), Statistical Process Control (SPC), and Corrective and Preventive Action (CAPA) implementations across production workflows.
• Governance & Stop-Work Authority: Maintain strict compliance with environmental, safety, and operational quality guidelines, retaining full authority to intervene in or halt non-conforming operations to safeguard product integrity.

3. CUP Maintenance Planning & Communication

• Maintenance Strategy & Scheduling: Oversee long-term and short-term maintenance planning for Central Utility Plant (CUP) systems, ensuring alignment with production demands and vendor service capabilities.
• Outage & Preventive Maintenance Coordination: Plan and schedule Preventive Maintenance (PM) activities, minimizing plant downtime and mitigating risks to continuous utility services.
• Operational Communication: Drive clear, timely communication regarding CUP maintenance windows, status updates, and utility risk assessments to internal teams, executive leadership, and customer counterparts.

4. Operational Oversight & Resource Management

• Daily Workload Management: Assist the Plant Manager in managing day-to-day operations, shift assignments, and resource allocation to support current site workload demands including during turnarounds, new equipment and CUP commissioning.
• Asset & Spare Parts Governance: Oversee critical utility assets and support inventory tracking for essential components and standard gases in coordination with quality and maintenance personnel.
• Facility Compliance & EHS: Enforce site safety rules, regulatory standards, and operational protocol execution.

5. Performance Management & Team Development

• Team Leadership & Supervision: Oversee daily performance and goal alignment for plant technicians, operational engineers, and chemists.
• Performance Evaluations & Feedback: Conduct regular performance reviews, set individual development objectives, and provide continuous feedback and coaching.
• Skill Development & Training: Identify technical training needs across operations, engineering, and laboratory teams to ensure continuous workforce development and compliance certification.

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Are you a MATCH?

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Operations Management, or a related technical field or equivalent work experience
• 11+ years of operational leadership with high stakes customers/industries such as electronics, pharmaceutical, or nuclear facilities including performance and talent management, subcontractor management, and cross team project leadership experience.
• 11+ year engineering experience within a chemical processing, industrial gas, semiconductor, or high-tech manufacturing environment.
• Demonstrated experience managing customer relationships and technical outage/maintenance/commissioning communications.
• Quality Systems Expertise: Strong working knowledge of quality frameworks (ISO/QMS), quality engineering tools (FMEA, SPC, RCA, PDCA), and measurement system analysis (MSA) concepts.
• Utility & Plant Knowledge: Hands-on familiarity with Central Utility Plant (CUP) operations, gas distribution, analytical equipment (GC, GCMS, moisture, and oxygen analyzers), and preventative maintenance practices.
• Communication & Leadership: Exceptional verbal and written technical communication skills; capability to effectively interface with enterprise customers, cross-functional site teams, and vendor representatives.
• Problem-Solving: Ability to rapidly develop structured troubleshooting plans under dynamic operational workloads.

Preferred Qualification s

• Experience in the semiconductor industry
• Experience in the industrial gas industry