Ceramics Technology Manager

Key responsibilities:

• Senior member of the West Asia Ceramics sales and technical team

• Define and lead the technical support to customers, production units, and development projects for West Asia (primarily India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

• Lead self and develop the technical support team and the lab on the perimeter 

• Travel within the area.

• Manage development projects

Project Management:

• To be an active member of the Technical Support team, visiting customers when necessary.

• To define and organize the Technical Support team on different aspects 

  • Identify the necessary resources

  • Train/recruit staff depending on workload – application interest 

  • Define the equipment’s – procedures and facilities in complement with existing ones

  • Support the routine management of laboratory functions.

• To organize the customer technical support in coordination with the sales team

• Understand the market attractiveness by application in terms of actors– size – technical challenges – competition and product value. Prioritize the actions to better address each applications 

• Be in charge of the new product development pipe in collaboration with the marketing/sales/production team

• Give technical expertise on mineral and applications to support the development projects

• Interpret and report the findings of technical work and communicate at required levels

• Understand customer challenges and pain points and be proactive in devising solutions

• Have a strong safety culture and ensure that relevant company HSE procedures are followed within the department

JOB SPECIFICATIONS

Education and Experience:

• Bachelor / engineering qualification in materials science, industrial minerals, refractories, ceramics or ceramics related science 

• >10 yrs.  experience in ceramics related industry (ideally whiteware ceramics manufacturer)

• 5 years of leading technical teams

Knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics:

• Committed and autonomous. 

• Self-motivated, ability to lead and motivate the team.

• Good command of written and spoken English

• Ability to communicate and work with all levels of management & cultures.

• Customer focused.

• Organized and rigorous, pay attention to details.

• Operational experience in production environment. 

• Some basic financial knowledge for project appraisal. 

• Budgeting / planning and execution experience.

• Extended HSE knowledge.

Strong leadership behaviors:

• Lead self: 

Is aware, develops self & is a role model (seeks feedback, takes steps to set the right leadership example, improves personnel performance).

• Leads others:

Understands the team. Leads, develops & empowers them (encourages & inspires team to come out of their comfort zone).

• Communicate & collaborate:

Demonstrates strong communication, collaboration & influence across boundaries (leads & collaborates across boundaries, networks to share knowledge & drive performance.

• Delivers result:

Effectively delivers sustainable results for the short & long term (adapts to changing business priorities whilst maintaining focus on personal & team results, commits to plan.

• Drives improvement:

Applies a continuous improvement mindset, anticipates future customer’s / business needs (gathers external insight to innovate & drive business performances, challenges the status quo).

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