{"id":2101686,"url":"https://alion.io/job/mariana-minerals-lab-manager","title":"Lab Manager","company":{"id":8004,"name":"Mariana Minerals","domain":"marianaminerals.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/marianaminerals","size_band":"501-1000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":80,"open_postings":10,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.8,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":40,"computed_at":"2026-10-14T06:34:16Z"}},"role":"Science & Research","role_family":"Science & Research","seniority":"senior","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Houston, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":88000,"max_usd":166000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":958},"experience_years_min":8,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-08T16:24:24Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-08","last_verified_at":"2026-10-14T09:40:38Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":5,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":5},"description":"About Mariana Minerals\nMariana Minerals is a software-first, vertically integrated minerals company on a mission to supply the critical minerals powering modern energy, AI, and defense technologies. We’re reimagining the minerals supply chain by combining deep industry expertise with advanced software, automation, and data-driven decision-making.\nThe Role\nMariana 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.\nYou 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.\nWhat you'll do\nBuild and lead the laboratory\nLead daily laboratory operations supporting pilot plant campaigns, process development, and product qualification\n\nSpecify, purchase, install, and commission analytical instrumentation and sample preparation equipment for a new laboratory, and manage the associated capital and operating budgets\n\nSupervise, mentor, and develop analytical chemists and technicians, including hiring, training and qualification records, scheduling, and performance reviews\n\nOwn the analytical program\nOversee analytical testing using ICP-OES, ICP-MS, XRF, XRD, titration, ion chromatography, and other relevant techniques\n\nOwn sample preparation for difficult mineral matrices, including crushing, pulverizing, splitting, drying, loss on ignition, acid digestion, and fusion of refractory materials\n\nEstablish, validate, and continuously improve analytical methods for high matrix solutions such as concentrated leach liquors, high salt streams, and organic phases from solvent extraction\n\nSupport pyrometallurgical characterization needs including elemental assay of feeds, calcines, slags, dusts, and residues, along with moisture, LOI, carbon and sulfur, and particle size analysis\n\nManage external and umpire laboratory relationships for methods held outside the site, including sample shipping, turnaround, and result reconciliation\n\nProvide analytical inputs to mass balance and metallurgical accounting, and work with process engineers to resolve balance closure issues\n\nQuality, data, and systems\nDevelop and enforce laboratory SOPs, QA/QC protocols, and data validation procedures, including certified reference materials, duplicates, spikes, blanks, and control charting\n\nCollaborate 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.\n\nOwn detection limits, precision and accuracy targets, and documented uncertainty for every reported method\n\nImplement 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\n\nSet and hold turnaround time commitments by priority tier, so operations receives time-critical results fast enough to act on them\n\nMaintain and oversee calibration, preventive maintenance, and troubleshooting of analytical instrumentation, and manage service contracts and vendor relationships\n\nManage laboratory inventory including consumables, gases, standards, and reagents\n\nSafety and compliance\nEnsure compliance with safety regulations, the chemical hygiene plan, and environmental requirements\n\nOwn safe handling, storage, and segregation of concentrated acids, bases, flammable solvents, and hazardous samples, including fume hood performance and emergency equipment readiness\n\nManage laboratory waste characterization, accumulation, and disposal in line with regulatory requirements\n\nLead laboratory incident investigation and corrective action, and participate in site hazard reviews\n\nWhat You'll Bring\nBachelor or Master degree in Chemistry, Metallurgy, Materials Science, Chemical Engineering, or a related field\n\n8 or more years of hands-on analytical laboratory experience, including significant experience with ICP-OES, ICP-MS, and XRF methods\n\n3 or more years managing laboratory personnel or leading analytical teams\n\nDemonstrated experience analyzing both solids and solutions from mineral processing or metallurgical operations, including sample preparation of refractory matrices by acid digestion and fusion\n\nStrong understanding of inorganic chemistry, trace element analysis, matrix and interference effects, spectral corrections, and method validation\n\nExperience supporting both high temperature and wet chemical process streams is strongly preferred, including slags, calcines, dusts, leach solutions, and solvent extraction phases\n\nDemonstrated experience implementing QA/QC systems and maintaining data integrity standards in a production or pilot support environment\n\nExperience standing up a new laboratory, or significantly expanding one, including instrument selection, installation, and qualification\n\nExperience implementing or administering a LIMS or comparable digital data workflow\n\nExperience in minerals processing, metallurgy, chemicals, specialty materials, or a similar industrial environment\n\nWorking knowledge of OSHA laboratory standards, chemical hygiene requirements, hazardous waste handling, and shipping of regulated samples\n\nStrong organizational skills and the ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced startup environment\n\nExcellent written and verbal communication skills, and the ability to present analytical limitations and uncertainty clearly to engineers and operators\n\nOur culture is built on four principles:\nEveryone Gets Home Safe. We never put speed or cost ahead of people.\nExtreme Ownership. We take full responsibility for outcomes, relentlessly driving toward solutions.\nEngineer Out Requirements, then Automate. We simplify, optimize, and then automate for scale.\nShare Your Legos. We collaborate openly, share knowledge, and empower each other to build bigger, better solutions.\nJoin us as we build the future of responsible mineral sourcing and supply!","description_format":"text","description_chars":6601,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":8,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"master","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Mining","Mining Tech","Non-ferrous Metals"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-08T18:47:22Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 15","filings_12m":15,"filings_prev_12m":2,"green_card_filings_12m":0,"median_offered_wage_usd":152500,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-03T21:08:04+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)"],"filings_for_role_12m":0}],"liveness":{"score":63,"band":"ok","label":"Likely open","p_open":1,"p_active":0.632,"p_room":1,"age_days":5,"expected_fill_days":40,"reasons":["conf:2","stale_co","velocity","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-10-14T06:34:16Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/mariana-minerals-lab-manager","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/mariana-minerals-lab-manager.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-14T10:31:56Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":12366,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-15T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":8004},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=8004"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fmariana-minerals-lab-manager"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fmariana-minerals-lab-manager"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fmariana-minerals-lab-manager"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/mariana-minerals-lab-manager\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fmariana-minerals-lab-manager"}]}