Wood Coatings Application Specialist | Industrial Finishing

Location: El Reno, Oklahoma
Salary: $60,000–$85,000/year
Schedule: Full-time

Your spray technique matters. Your eye for finish quality matters. Put both to work improving the coatings used on finished wood products.

This role is for a hands-on wood finishing specialist who knows how coatings behave beyond the product label. You'll spray, test, compare, and troubleshoot industrial wood coatings, helping improve application performance and finished-panel quality. Your practical experience will also help shape new product development, from testing formulations to establishing application settings and technical guidelines.

Work alongside research and development and product management teams at a coatings company, contributing real-world application expertise to product improvements and new product validation.

What You’ll Get

• $60,000–$85,000 annual salary.

• A hands-on technical role connecting wood finishing, product testing, and development.

• The opportunity to influence coating performance and new product validation.

• Collaboration with research and development and product management teams.

What You’ll Do

• Apply industrial wood coatings using airless, air-assisted airless, HVLP, and conventional spray equipment.

• Test stains, lacquers, conversion varnishes, waterborne coatings, and two-component finishes.

• Evaluate drying time, sanding quality, flow and leveling, film thickness, color development, appearance, and finish defects.

• Troubleshoot issues such as orange peel, dry spray, poor atomization, and inconsistent film build.

• Compare competitor coatings against company products for application characteristics and finished-panel quality.

• Maintain spray guns, pumps, pressure pots, spray booths, fluid circulation systems, and related equipment.

• Partner with R&D and product management to improve formulations, establish spray settings, validate products, and develop technical application guidelines.

• Document test results and follow environmental, health, and safety procedures, including proper waste disposal.

What You Bring

• Hands-on experience spraying industrial wood coatings in a manufacturing, OEM, production-finishing, or coatings technical facility.

• Practical experience with multiple wood coating types, including stains, lacquers, conversion varnishes, waterborne coatings, and two-component finishes.

• Working knowledge of airless, air-assisted airless, HVLP, and conventional spray equipment.

• The ability to diagnose coating defects and evaluate finished wood panels.

• Experience maintaining spray equipment and fluid delivery systems.

Preferred: At least five years of hands-on industrial wood finishing or coatings application experience.