Technical Manager - Metals Manufacturing / Process Engineering

Location: Ellesmere Port, Cheshire
Salary: Negotiable, dependent on experience
Working Hours: 37.5 hours per week, Monday to Friday, with flexibility to support a 24/7 manufacturing operation
Contract: Permanent, full-time

The Opportunity

Are you an experienced Technical Manager, Process Engineering Manager or Metallurgical Engineer with a background in metals manufacturing or advanced materials?

Are you looking for an opportunity to lead a technical team while playing a hands-on role in improving manufacturing performance, developing processes and supporting industrial expansion?

We are recruiting on behalf of our client, a specialist metals manufacturing business, for a Technical Manager to lead its technical function at its Ellesmere Port facility.

This is a key leadership position, combining technical team management, manufacturing process optimisation, problem-solving and research and development.

You will be responsible for ensuring manufacturing processes operate safely, consistently and efficiently, while helping translate new technologies and processes developed through R&D into reliable full-scale production.

Working closely with Production, Engineering, Quality, Laboratory and HSE teams, you will be the primary technical point of contact for manufacturing process issues and play an important role in supporting the business's expansion and transition to a 24/7 operation.

The Role

Reporting to the Director of Research & Development, you will lead and develop the technical team, providing day-to-day technical leadership and ensuring manufacturing processes are optimised, controlled and continuously improved.

This is a hands-on technical management position, requiring someone who can balance immediate production challenges with longer-term process development, improvement projects and manufacturing scale-up.

Key responsibilities will include:

Technical Leadership & Manufacturing Support

• Lead, manage and develop the technical team, including engineers, scientists and technical personnel.
• Set team priorities, objectives and performance expectations, providing regular guidance and development.
• Act as the primary technical point of contact for manufacturing process issues across the production operation.
• Lead root-cause investigations using structured problem-solving techniques such as 8D and 5 Whys.
• Establish and maintain critical process parameters, operating windows and manufacturing control plans.
• Work closely with Production to improve manufacturing yield, metal recovery, throughput and equipment availability.
• Monitor technical KPIs, identify operational risks and report progress to the Director of R&D.

Process Safety & Quality

• Lead and support technical risk assessments, HAZOP studies and Management of Change (MOC) activities.
• Ensure process hazards associated with high temperatures, vacuum systems, molten salts and reactive metals are appropriately managed.
• Work with Process Safety Engineers and HSE to maintain safe and controlled manufacturing operations.
• Take responsibility for technical operating procedures, process specifications and technical sign-offs.
• Work with Quality and Laboratory teams to investigate non-conformances, customer complaints and product consistency issues.
• Support customer audits, product qualifications and technical enquiries.

Process Development & Industrialisation

• Translate R&D developments into documented, repeatable and reliable production processes.
• Plan and oversee process trials from laboratory and pilot scale through to full-scale manufacturing.
• Apply structured experimental methods to process development and optimisation.
• Provide technical engineering input into capital projects and manufacturing capacity expansion.
• Ensure production teams are trained and operationally prepared before new processes are introduced.
• Support the commissioning and introduction of new manufacturing technologies and equipment.

Continuous Improvement

• Use manufacturing and process data to identify and deliver improvements.
• Drive improvements in production yield, scrap reduction, rework, energy consumption and process consistency.
• Reduce unplanned downtime and improve manufacturing reliability.
• Support automation, process monitoring and data collection initiatives.
• Establish and share best practice across production shifts and technical teams.

Manufacturing Processes

The successful candidate will support a range of specialist metals manufacturing and processing technologies, including:

• Molten salt electrolysis for rare earth metal production.
• Metallothermic reduction, including calciothermic reduction.
• Vacuum induction melting and vacuum refining.
• Sublimation and distillation processes.
• Rare earth alloy melting, casting and strip casting.

You do not need direct experience across every process listed. A strong background in industrial process engineering, metallurgy or advanced materials manufacturing, combined with the ability to apply engineering principles across different technologies, is more important.

About You

You will be an experienced technical or process engineering professional with a background in metals manufacturing, metallurgy, materials science or advanced materials production.

You will have experience leading technical teams and a proven ability to resolve complex manufacturing problems, improve process