About this role
Are you ready to move your career forward and help shape our company’s and customers’ futures?
If you aspire to challenge yourself, work with the best in the industry and join a successful team where you can make a meaningful contribution, then we invite you to join us at Ketjen Corporation, a provider of advanced catalyst solutions to leading producers in the petrochemical, refining, and specialty chemicals industries. Together, we can create a legacy marked by innovation, excitement, and energy.
Ketjen is hiring a senior leader to build its data, analytics, and AI capability. The final title and level will be set by Human Resources based on the candidate’s background and scope. Today, Ketjen’s analytics sit across separate tools: plant historians, equipment analytics, and early automation and AI pilots. This leader will connect those efforts, help select the right data and analytics platform, and create a practical way to pilot and scale AI. This is a build role for someone who wants to shape a function, works well with plant teams, and can present a clear data strategy to executives.
REPORTING AND KEY RELATIONSHIPS This role reports to Chief Information Officer and works closely with Applications, Infrastructure and Cybersecurity, plant and manufacturing leadership, and functional leaders across finance, supply chain, commercial, and R&D.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
Data and Analytics Strategy
• Assess current data, analytics, and AI capabilities, including plant floor tools, and decide what to keep, retire, or build.
• Set the data and analytics strategy and roadmap, with executive alignment on priority investments.
• Design the target data platform, including reporting, dashboards, data engineering, pipelines, and advanced analytics, once the platform direction is selected.
• Retire or replace point tools where a unified platform is better, while preserving what works.
IT & OT Data Integration
• Connect enterprise system data with plant floor data from historians and equipment sensors.
• Partner with manufacturing and engineering to improve yield, reliability, and maintenance planning.
• Ensure plant-to-enterprise data flows are secure and do not create operational technology risk.
AI Strategy and Piloting
• Identify AI and automation use cases based on business value and feasibility.
• Run focused pilots, prove value quickly, and scale only where there is a clear case.
• Build on existing automation and AI work and extend proven ideas into manufacturing, supply chain, and commercial operations.
• Set practical AI guardrails for privacy, security, and human oversight.
Data Governance and Quality
• Establish data ownership, quality standards, and master data practices across functions.
• Define reporting standards so key metrics mean the same thing across functions and sites.
• Build a data catalog and access model that makes trusted data easier to find and use securely.
Business Partnership and Value
• Work with plant, finance, supply chain, and commercial leaders to target decisions where better data can improve outcomes.
• Partner with business leads to define the right KPIs, measurement rules, and dashboards.
• Report business value from data, analytics, and AI initiatives in executive terms.
• Advise executives on what AI can and cannot do for Ketjen now.
Team Building
• Hire and lead a small team of data engineers and analysts who can work across IT and OT.
• Decide what to build in-house versus source through partners, and manage key vendor relationships.
EXPERIENCE Required Qualifications
• Bachelor's degree in data science, computer science, engineering, or a related field.
• Substantial experience building or leading enterprise data, analytics, or AI functions.
• Experience with modern BI, data engineering, and analytics platforms, including evaluating options and recommending the right fit.
• Experience working with both information technology and operational technology data in a manufacturing or industrial setting.
• A track record of piloting AI or automation initiatives and moving them into real production use.
• Strong understanding of current AI technology stacks, including generative AI, agentic patterns, orchestration, integration, and secure enterprise deployment.
• Strong stakeholder management skills, from plant managers to finance executives.
Preferred Qualifications
• Experience in chemicals, manufacturing, or another process industry with continuous operations.
• Familiarity with plant historian platforms and equipment or process analytics tools.
• Experience building an early-stage data or analytics function.
• Experience in a private equity owned or sponsor-backed company.
• Familiarity with responsible AI governance and data privacy practices.
WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR
• A builder who wants to shape a new function.
• Someone who treats plant floor data with the same seriousness as financial data.
• A practical AI leader who proves real use cases rather than chasing every new tool.
• A confident communicator who can make the business case for data investment.
LOCATION AND TRAVEL
• Based at Ketjen's headquarters in Houston, Texas.
• Travel to manufacturing sites as needed to understand plant data and support use case development.
Benefits of Joining Ketjen
• Competitive compensation
• Comprehensive benefits package
• A diverse array of resources to support you professionally and personally.
Apply today and help Ketjen unleash the POTENTIAL of advanced chemistry for industries that power the world.