Job Description

Director of Plant Operations

Location : Willcox, AZ (on-site)

Reports to : Chief Operating Officer

Industry : Specialty Potatoes / Fresh Produce

Employment type : Full-time

About Us

At Plant Grow Harvest (PGH), we’re redefining what premium potatoes can be. Through our vertically integrated farming and packing operations, we bring our consumer brand, Digs, to leading retailers and foodservice partners nationwide. Our mission is simple: grow better, pack smarter, and deliver excellence from field to fork, while building a culture where A-players thrive.

Why This Role Exists

Our production facility is the heartbeat of our business. As we scale, we’re looking for a Director of Plant Operations to turn a good plant into a great one, a leader who thrives on systems, accountability, and velocity.

You’ll coach and develop a young, hungry team, bring structure and process to every shift, and free up our senior leadership to focus on growth and expansion. This is a chance to own the plant, elevate performance, and shape culture at a rapidly growing agri-food company.

This Job Is For You If…

• You’re an animal for execution: driven, relentless, and allergic to “good enough.”
• You’re a coach at heart, fired up by helping a young team get better every week.
• You speak potato fluently: you know bruise points, packout rates, and what great product looks like before anyone else does.
• You geek out on cost, equipment, and labor efficiencies, you see the floor as a living system and can’t rest until it hums.

This Job Is Not For You If…

• You’re all talk and no data, you can’t drive change without measuring it.
• You develop people or chase results, but not both. We demand both.
• You communicate in vague generalities and get lost bouncing between email, text, Teams, and calls. Clarity wins here.

What You’ll Do

• Lead all daily operations from raw receiving to final shipment, ensuring safety, quality, and throughput every shift.
• Align labor, equipment, and scheduling to hit plan while managing cost and efficiency.
• Bottleneck identification and countermeasures; drive hour-by-hour performance routines with OEE and downtime analytics. 
• Cross-functional orchestration with Maintenance and QA/QC to align production plans with uptime and quality standards.
• Build SOPs, training systems, and a visible skills matrix that lift performance across the team.
• Champion a culture of accountability, teamwork, and ownership on the floor.
• Coordinate with Sales and Logistics to deliver exceptional customer service and fulfillment.
• Use data, KPIs, and visual management to drive continuous improvement, hour by hour, day by day.

What You’ll Bring

• 7+ years leading plant operations in Potato Operations
• Proven success managing labor planning, cost-to-serve, and production flow.
• Experience improving safety, quality, throughput, and efficiency through structured systems.
• Strong background collaborating with Maintenance, QA, HR, and Finance.
• Comfort with raw receiving, post-harvest handling, and fresh inventory management (FEFO preferred).
• A track record of building teams and culture, developing people while holding a hard line on performance.

Bonus points if you have:

• Speak Spanish fluently
• Exposure to automation, capital projects, or lean/continuous improvement.
• Experience managing diverse labor sources (including H-2A) and multi-shift environments.

Who You Are

You’re floor-first, data-driven, and people-centered. You make performance visible, coach to the standard, and raise the bar through clarity and follow-through. You don’t just hit goals—you build the system that makes hitting them the norm.

Compensation & Benefits

Competitive base salary, performance bonus tied to plant KPIs, comprehensive benefits package (100% covered by the company), and relocation assistance where applicable.

Join Us

If you want to build a best-in-class operation, lead an ambitious young team, and turn potential into performance, this is your shot.

Apply now and help us grow something exceptional.

Job Tags

Similar Jobs