Lab Manager

The Role

Mariana Minerals is seeking a highly organized and technically strong Lab Manager to build and lead the analytical laboratory supporting our DSM Pilot Plant in Houston. The DSM pilot couples a high temperature pyrometallurgical section with a downstream hydrometallurgical refining section, so the laboratory has to handle everything from feeds, calcines, slags, and dusts to leach solutions, loaded and stripped organics, precipitates, products, and effluent.

You will stand the laboratory up from an empty room: equipment selection and commissioning, method development and validation, QA/QC systems, staffing, and the data workflows that connect results to plant decisions. Once the plant is running, you own turnaround time and data quality for round-the-clock campaigns, where an assay result can determine whether the plant keeps running.

What you'll do

Build and lead the laboratory

• Lead daily laboratory operations supporting pilot plant campaigns, process development, and product qualification

• Specify, purchase, install, and commission analytical instrumentation and sample preparation equipment for a new laboratory, and manage the associated capital and operating budgets

• Supervise, mentor, and develop analytical chemists and technicians, including hiring, training and qualification records, scheduling, and performance reviews

Own the analytical program

• Oversee analytical testing using ICP-OES, ICP-MS, XRF, XRD, titration, ion chromatography, and other relevant techniques

• Own sample preparation for difficult mineral matrices, including crushing, pulverizing, splitting, drying, loss on ignition, acid digestion, and fusion of refractory materials

• Establish, validate, and continuously improve analytical methods for high matrix solutions such as concentrated leach liquors, high salt streams, and organic phases from solvent extraction

• Support pyrometallurgical characterization needs including elemental assay of feeds, calcines, slags, dusts, and residues, along with moisture, LOI, carbon and sulfur, and particle size analysis

• Manage external and umpire laboratory relationships for methods held outside the site, including sample shipping, turnaround, and result reconciliation

• Provide analytical inputs to mass balance and metallurgical accounting, and work with process engineers to resolve balance closure issues

Quality, data, and systems

• Develop and enforce laboratory SOPs, QA/QC protocols, and data validation procedures, including certified reference materials, duplicates, spikes, blanks, and control charting

• Collaborate with process and plant engineering on sampling-point design and validation, covering location, sampler type, frequency, and sample handling, and confirm that each point delivers a representative sample before it is relied on for process decisions.

• Own detection limits, precision and accuracy targets, and documented uncertainty for every reported method

• Implement and administer a laboratory information management system or equivalent digital data workflow, including sample chain of custody from the plant floor to the reported result

• Set and hold turnaround time commitments by priority tier, so operations receives time-critical results fast enough to act on them

• Maintain and oversee calibration, preventive maintenance, and troubleshooting of analytical instrumentation, and manage service contracts and vendor relationships

• Manage laboratory inventory including consumables, gases, standards, and reagents

Safety and compliance

• Ensure compliance with safety regulations, the chemical hygiene plan, and environmental requirements

• Own safe handling, storage, and segregation of concentrated acids, bases, flammable solvents, and hazardous samples, including fume hood performance and emergency equipment readiness

• Manage laboratory waste characterization, accumulation, and disposal in line with regulatory requirements

• Lead laboratory incident investigation and corrective action, and participate in site hazard reviews

What You'll Bring

• Bachelor or Master degree in Chemistry, Metallurgy, Materials Science, Chemical Engineering, or a related field

• 8 or more years of hands-on analytical laboratory experience, including significant experience with ICP-OES, ICP-MS, and XRF methods

• 3 or more years managing laboratory personnel or leading analytical teams

• Demonstrated experience analyzing both solids and solutions from mineral processing or metallurgical operations, including sample preparation of refractory matrices by acid digestion and fusion

• Strong understanding of inorganic chemistry, trace element analysis, matrix and interference effects, spectral corrections, and method validation

• Experience supporting both high temperature and wet chemical process streams is strongly preferred, including slags, calcines, dusts, leach solutions, and solvent extraction phases

• Demonstrated experience implementing QA/QC systems and maintaining data integrity standards in a production or pilot support environment

• Experience standing up a new laboratory, or significantly expanding one, including instrument selection, installation, and qualification

• Experience implementing or administering a LIMS or comparable digital data workflow

• Experience in minerals processing, metallurgy, chemicals, specialty materials, or a similar industrial environment

• Working knowledge of OSHA laboratory standards, chemical hygiene requirements, hazardous waste handling, and shipping of regulated samples

• Strong organizational skills and the ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced startup environment

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, and the ability to present analytical limitations and uncertainty clearly to engineers and operators

Our culture is built on four principles: