The Process Superintendent is an operations leader responsible for setting direction, priorities, and performance expectations for the processing facilities. The role focuses on operational stability, risk management, and sustained metallurgical performance through cross-functional alignment. Through two General Supervisors, the superintendent ensures safe, reliable, and cost-effective operation of mill, leach, and gold recovery circuits while meeting production, recovery, and cost commitments.
Essential Functions:
- Provide clear operational direction and priorities for processing operations through two General Supervisors and their supervisory teams.
- Maintain technical and operational oversight of crushing, milling, classification, gravity concentration, heap leach, CIC/CIL adsorption, elution, electrowinning, refinery, and solution management systems.
- Ensure stable operation within design limits by monitoring performance trends including throughput, grind size, leach kinetics, reagent consumption, solution inventories, recovery profiles, and heap leach solution balances.
- Focus leadership effort on systemic issues, operational risk, and sustained performance.
- Ensure production plans and operating strategies are executable, understood, and appropriately resourced at the General Supervisor level.
- Lead operational risk management, including critical control effectiveness, operating discipline, and deviation response.
- Align with maintenance leadership on medium- and long-term strategies for critical assets, major maintenance events, and reliability risk.
- Partner with metallurgy and technical services to prioritize improvement initiatives, implement changes in a controlled manner, and protect baseline metallurgical performance.
- Serve as the processing representative on site project teams to ensure capital and improvement projects are technically sound, operationally practical, and well-integrated with existing plant systems.
- Coordinate ore delivery, stacking rates, lift sequencing, and pad cycling plans for heap leach operations with Mining and Mobile Maintenance to ensure alignment with processing capacity, recovery objectives, and equipment availability.
- Drive consistency through standard work, management operating systems, and effective escalation pathways.
- Champion Management of Change (MOC) for processing, ensuring all process, equipment, and operating changes are formally reviewed, risk-assessed, communicated, and implemented in a controlled manner.
- Own processing cost performance by monitoring trends and addressing structural cost drivers such as power, reagents, wear materials, and contractor utilization.
- Own processing budgets, forecasts, and production plans, ensuring realistic and sustainable operating assumptions.
- Develop General Supervisors through coaching, expectation-setting, and accountability for results.
- Communicate performance, risks, and priorities clearly to the Process Manager and cross-functional stakeholders.
Qualifications and Skill Requirements:
- Bachelor’s degree in Metallurgical, Chemical, Mining, or Mechanical Engineering, or equivalent operational experience.
- Minimum 10-12 years of experience in mineral processing operations, with demonstrated leadership responsibility in general supervisor or equivalent for at least 4 years.
- Strong working knowledge of gold processing operations, including mills, heap leach, and gold recovery circuits.
- Proven ability to lead teams in a continuous improvement, safety-focused operating environment.
- Solid understanding of production planning, cost control, and operational KPIs.
- Experience working in a large-scale open pit and/or heap leach operation preferred.
- Effective communicator with the ability to influence across departments and organizational levels.
- Proficient with plant data systems, reporting tools, and Microsoft Office applications.
- Demonstrated ability to mentor and develop supervisors and high-potential employees.