Job Posting for Composting Operations Manager
12.20.2019
We’re looking for someone who is passionate about the environment, mechanically inclined, curious, ambitious and inventive to lead our new dog and cat poop composting operation.
For more than thirty years, Muddies have been helping Pacific NW dog and cat owners choose and feed healthy foods to their animals. We’re very proud of the contribution we make to cat and dog health, but in recent years, many of us have begun to think about where all that healthy cat and dog food ends up. It turns out that most Pacific NW pet poop lands in municipal landfills—where it may sit, without breaking down, for decades. Even worse, landfilled pet waste in degradable bags creates methane (worse for the atmosphere than carbon dioxide) and pet poop that never makes it to the landfill can contaminate ground and surface water.
In 2020, Mud Bay is going to begin doing something about this problem: we’re going to start composting dog and cat poop to give Pacific NW cat and dog owners an alternative they can be proud to use—and that’s why we’re hiring our first Composting Operations Manager.
We’re looking for someone who can bring mechanical competence and curiosity to the task of learning how to compost pet poop. Initially our Composting Operations Manager will be mentored by a former manufacturing plant manager who has become a skilled composter by developing and operating one of the first commercial cat and dog poop operations in North America. After learning the art and science of composting pet poop from this expert, our Composting Operations Manager will take charge of Mud Bay’s current composting operations. Then our Composting Operations Manager will tackle the challenges of improving and growing Mud Bay’s composting operation.
We are very ambitious. We want to make a significant contribution to the Pacific NW environment by scaling our composting operation to the point that we can keep much of our region’s pet poop out of the waste stream. We’re looking for an operations leader who can help us do that.
Mud Bay is owned by its founders, their friends and family and by Mud Bay’s employees (Muddies). As Muddies, we’re here to contribute to the health of animals and to the happiness of those who care for them. We’re also here to create fulfilling work, meaningful careers and a strong company that we can be proud of.
The work we expect our Composting Operations Manager to do includes…
- Learning the art and science of composting from our composting mentor
- Becoming an expert in dog and cat poop composting through research, experimentation, developing connections and learning from others
- Hands-on running of our composting operation
- Learning and maintaining compliance with local, state and federal laws and regulations
- Participating in Mud Bay’s Leadership Development program and evolving their approach to leadership to align with Mud Bay’s leadership approach
- Recruiting, hiring, leading, mentoring, directing and inspiring the other Muddies who work in our composting operations
- Developing and maintaining databases and other records that enable us to measure and improve performance and comply with governmental regulations
- Improving our composting systems and processes with the goals of improving quality, reducing waste and enabling growth
- Keeping themselves and the other Muddies who work in composting safe
- Planning and leading the expansion of our composting operation
The person we are looking for to become our Composting Operations Manager…
- Is passionate about the environment and about composting as a way to reduce humans’—and animals’—impact on it;
- Is mechanically skilled, a tinkerer, someone who enjoys and is good at maintaining, fixing and improving machinery
- Is curious, a life-long learner, more interested in learning and growing than being right
- Enjoys solving problems and embraces the scientific method
- Is adaptable and comfortable with change
- Is able and inclined to work collaboratively
- Has experience leading others
- Is happy doing things themselves and is also happy leading and directing others to do things
- Has a strong work ethic
- Is excited about helping direct and lead a rapidly growing and changing business
- Is a self-starter
- Is more inclined to ask How can I make it better? than to say If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
- Is quick to laugh at themselves and to share a laugh with others
- May have experience leading in a manufacturing or other production environment
- May have training or experience in LEAN or other approaches to process improvement
- Is an effective communicator both orally and in writing
- Is willing and able to solve people problems, not just mechanical ones
- Is comfortable working with computers
- Doesn’t mind getting dirty and can deal with being surrounded by stinky stuff
- Understands and is comfortable with the likelihood that their role will evolve as we grow and evolve our new composting business
- Is a dog or cat or dog & cat person
- Is up to the physical demands of the work, including standing, bending, squatting and lifting for some, most or all of the day
- Willing and able to obtain a Class B and/or Class C commercial driver’s license
- Is able to work in our current composting facility in Lakebay, WA, able to spend part of some work weeks in our Thurston County home office, able to travel to Seattle, Portland and other parts of the Pacific NW and will be able to work in composting facilities that Mud Bay opens in other parts of the Pacific NW in the future.
What is Mud Bay?
Mud Bay began in 1988 when Elsa Wulff bought a struggling farm store located on a hill above Mud Bay, the southernmost reach of Puget Sound, just outside of Olympia, Washington. Joined soon after by her son and daughter, the Wulffs and their coworkers evolved Mud Bay into one of the pioneer retailers of natural foods for cats and dogs. More than thirty years later, Mud Bay is an employee-owned company of nearly 60 locations and 500 staff with an annual growth rate of 15% to 20%. But for all our growth, neither our mission nor our values have changed.
We’re still all about contributing to the health of dogs and cats and the happiness of their owners. We’re still about empowering dog and cat owners with natural products and accurate information. And, we still all about building a strong company that we can all be proud of.
Who are we?
Muddies are a passionate bunch! We’re passionate about cat and dog health. We’re passionate about delighting the people who visit our stores and engage in our services. We’re passionate about investing in one another. We’re a company of owners—almost every Mud Bay staffer will become eligible for a long-term stake in Mud Bay within two years of joining us.
But Muddies thought and acted like owners years before we launched our Employee Stock Ownership Plan in 2015. Muddies are down-to-earth, casual and from-the heart. We work hard, and we can be intense about doing our best. There are over five hundred of us in two states, nearly 60 stores, two Mud Rooms, a home office and distribution center, but we share a common culture—a shared culture that’s abundantly evident on the day we close all of our workplaces to bring everymuddy together in the same place at the same time for an annual event we call Mudstock.
Why join us?
Join us because you love animals. Join us because you love helping humans. Join us because you want to work with people who care as much as you do about doing a good job. Join us because you want to be an owner of the place you work—and go to work surrounded by other owner-operators. Join us because you want to help lead a company that strives to help its employees build sustaining, fulfilling, life-time careers and afford retirement when the time comes. Join us because we’ve been growing steadily and strongly for thirty years and because we’re committed to continuing to grow—but growing only as fast as we can grow well. Join us because we’re financially responsible—and because it matters even more to us to be morally responsible. Join us because you want to spend the rest of your career with a company you love.