Plant Operator

Mission Zero Technologies is seeking a Plant Operator in Thetford, UK. The role involves operating and servicing a pilot plant for direct air capture technology, focusing on machinery maintenance and reliability. Candidates should have experience in plant operations, troubleshooting, and safety standards. The position requires site-based work with potential travel to customer sites. This is a contract role aimed at supporting the company's transition to a revenue-generating phase.
About Mission Zero Technologies

Were a London-based climate-tech start-up, working to reframe how the world views carbon in order to enable a thriving planet. Since 2020, we have pioneered the worlds most versatile direct air capture (DAC) technology to recover historic CO2 emissions from the atmosphere, anywhere, at any scale.

Backed by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the XPRIZE foundation, Stripe, and the UK Government, weve moved a brand new climate technology from lab scale to commercial plants in under three years, to empower carbon removal and sustainable utilisation.

About The Role

Join MZT at a pivotal moment as we transition from an early-stage R&D startup to a revenue-generating company ready to scale our direct-air capture technology globally.

MZT is offering a role, on a contract basis, for an Operations Support Engineer with skills in machinery maintenance and equipment reliability improvement programmes, ideally with experience in repair and servicing of absorption, scrubbing, gas-liquid separation systems, and/or electrodialytic processes. In this role you will operate and service our first technology deployments at industrial scale.

Inheriting MZT product modules designed and built by our delivery team, you will assist in executing our pilot plant experimental plans, paying particular attention to breakdowns and problem solving, learning the key reliability weak points of our technology in extended operation.

The role is a site-based role in our Norfolk premises with some time at our labs and offices in East London and potentially required travel to our customer sites across the UK and abroad. This will require you to show safe and effective operational and maintenance standards while working in rotational shifts with existing MZT science & engineering staff members.

Reporting to the Plant Operations Manager, key partners will include electromechanical, control and process engineers. You will also collaborate closely with the R&D team around specific product development.

What You'll Be Doing
• Operating and servicing MZT plant at our first industrial Pilot Plant, Norfolk - the UKs first ever deployment of carbon negative DAC technology.
• Conducting safe start-up for our MZT DAC modules.
• Maintaining and reporting on sustained operations over months of plant operations.
• Following and demonstrating our on-site Health & Safety culture.
• Assisting with execution of the pilot plant experimental plan in liaison with our Plant Operations Manager.
• Reporting back on unit performances, especially regular failure modes and input ideas for product improvement.
• Troubleshooting issues that arise, with good record-keeping for required interventions to be passed back to the product improvement team.
• Getting involved in failure analysis, using multiple methodologies to find root causes and propose improvement plans.
• Executing maintenance routines.
• Deputising for the Plant Operations Manager in inducting site visitors if needed.

What You'll Need To Be Successful In Thisrole
• Interest in developing skills in an exciting start-up, new technology environment, where you can rapidly grow your experience.
• Experience in operations and maintenance especially commissioning, start-up and maintenance of a variety of process plants.
• Experience operating and repairing plants in challenging environments.
• A passion for optimising technical solutions.
• Strong understanding of Reliability, Availability, Maintenance / OEE.
• Relevant control & instrumentation qualification.
• Functional understanding of chemical, electrical, mechanical portions of various unit operations such as gas-liquid contacting, water treatment, membrane processes.
• Clear communication skills.
• =3 years' experience in the chemical / processing / food / aggregate or similar industry(ies).
• Experience of working with PLC's and SCADA systems and fault finding.
• Experience maintaining, calibrating and commissioning process instrumentation.

Ideally you'll also have
• Experience in a startup environment.
• Experience running and repairing Research & Development pilot facilities.
• Suitable safety accreditation e.g. NEBOSH.
• Lean operational certificate, e.g. six sigma or equivalent.
• Continuous improvement training / programme experience.
• Experience across several processing industries.
• Experience working with absorption, scrubbing, continuous gas-liquid systems and/or electrodialysis.
• Good understanding of hazard and risk identification.
• Basic understanding of electrochemistry and industrial chemistry knowledge.
• Familiarity with servicing of processes handling industrial gases, especially CO2.

At Mission Zero, we value diversity of cultural backgrounds, experience, and perspectives, and leverage these qualities to create exceptional outcomes. We are dedicated to equal employment opportunities regardless of race, sex, religion or belief, ethnic or national origin, age, disability, citizenship, marital, domestic or civil partnership status, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy or related condition, or any other basis as protected by applicable law. Please do not hesitate to let us know if you have a disability or additional need that requires accommodation.

Our Hiring Process

Kindly allow us up to 2 weeks to review your application. Providing both of our schedules align, the total hiring process should take 4-6 weeks total to wrap up.
• Application review
• HR screening interview (10 minutes)
• Interview with Plant Operations Manager and Functional Lead
• Short case assignment (2 hours max.)
• Final interview