Chief Operating Officer Full Time

Chief Operating Officer Opportunity in Alberta

Status: Active

About the Company:

Manluk Industries is a global turnkey manufacturing provider serving the oil and gas and mining sectors. With more than 40 years of experience, the company delivers forging, heat treating, machining, fabrication, and advanced surface technologies to customers in over 20 countries.

Operating from 165,000 square feet of manufacturing space with approximately 200 employees in Wetaskiwin, Alberta, Manluk is known for strong technical capability, disciplined quality standards, and long-standing customer relationships. Manluk is seeking a Chief Operating Officer who is a practical leader able to align operations across business lines, support strong teams, and drive continued growth.

The Role:

The Chief Operating Officer (COO) leads operations across multiple manufacturing plants. Reporting to the President, the COO works closely with General Managers and corporate leaders to drive consistent performance, reliable customer delivery, and profitable growth, while strengthening the company’s position with existing customers and expanding into new markets and applications.

The COO provides oversight of all operational departments ensuring alignment across functions. Working closely with plant leadership and ownership, the COO ensures reliable operations that support the long-term success of the business.

The Responsibilities:

• Partner with sales leaders across multiple manufacturing divisions to ensure reliable execution of customer commitments and support profitable growth.
• Collaborate with sales, engineering, and plant leadership to develop new products and services aligned with customer needs and manufacturing capabilities.
• Coach and develop sales leaders, providing regular feedback and performance guidance to strengthen capability and accountability.
• Foster strong alignment between sales and operations, ensuring customer commitments are realistic, achievable, and delivered on time.
• Provide leadership and direction to Production Managers to ensure safe, efficient, and reliable operations across all manufacturing sites.
• Drive operational performance aligned with financial targets, ensuring plant results support overall profitability and business objectives.
• Enhance existing reporting practices to provide clear visibility into performance across all plants and business units, enabling informed decision-making.
• Build and strengthen leadership capability across multiple plants and functional leaders, reinforcing accountability and leadership consistency.
• Identify opportunities to improve efficiency, capacity, and operational consistency across plants while maintaining high standards of quality and delivery.
• Support the execution of growth initiatives, including expansion into new markets, customers, applications and industries.

The Requirements:

• 10+ years of leadership experience in industrial manufacturing, including at least 5 years overseeing operations across multiple manufacturing plants through plant or general managers.
• Proven ability to align corporate functions (sales, operations, IT, HR, projects) across multiple business units.
• Experience leading industrial B2B sales organizations, strengthening customer relationships, and driving profitable growth.
• Strong interpersonal skills with the ability to building and developing leadership team across operations, sales, and leadership teams.
• Track record of launching new products or services and expanding into new markets, including sectors such as aerospace, defence, or power generation.
• Strong understanding of heavy industrial manufacturing, including machining, fabrication, coatings, or similar processes.
• Financially literate, with the ability to interpret financial statements and connect plant performance to business results.
• Experience tracking and consolidating performance across multiple manufacturing sites.
• Working knowledge of Quality Management Systems (QMS) and maintaining consistent operational standards.
• Practical, self-sufficient leadership style, comfortable operating in a hands-on, owner-led environment.
• Willingness to travel globally to support customer relationships and business development.

Our goal at People First Solutions is to hire top performers for our clients. To this end, our selection process is thorough, enabling us to collect very detailed information. We base our selection process on Topgrading®, a proven method that allows our clients’ to effectively match top performing candidates to key leadership roles. As well, we integrate TalentSorter®, a behavioural science based assessment tool to help companies hire for “fit.”

If you possess the fundamental skills, experience and education required to be successful in this role we invite you to provide a cover letter and résumé in PDF, in confidence to either Bob Murray or Adrienne Giffen.

Bob Murray – bob@peoplefirstsolutions.com – 604.803.4377

Adrienne Giffen – adrienne@peoplefirstsolutions.com – 604.209.8023

We thank all applicants for their interest in this role.