Position Summary

The Director of Engineering & Maintenance will provide strategic and operational leadership for all engineering, maintenance, reliability, utilities, facilities, automation and capital-project activities across the business.

This is a senior leadership position responsible for ensuring that the company's manufacturing assets, infrastructure and engineering systems support safe, reliable, efficient and compliant production while delivering continuous improvement and long-term capacity growth.

The successful candidate will have significant experience in a high-volume food, meat, poultry, protein or other highly regulated manufacturing environment, with a strong understanding of the unique requirements associated with hygienic processing, sanitation, refrigeration, thermal processing, packaging, automation and USDA/FSIS-regulated operations.

The Director will develop and execute a multi-year engineering and asset-reliability strategy, while remaining sufficiently hands-on to solve complex operational problems and drive accountability within the maintenance and engineering organization.

Key Responsibilities

1. Engineering & Maintenance Leadership

• Lead the overall Engineering and Maintenance function across the manufacturing operation.
• Develop and implement a comprehensive asset-management and reliability strategy.
• Establish high standards for equipment availability, reliability, maintainability and operational performance.
• Build a proactive maintenance culture, moving the organization from reactive maintenance toward planned, preventive and predictive maintenance.
• Establish maintenanceKPIs including:
  • Equipment uptime
  • OEE
  • MTBF
  • MTTR
  • Planned vs. reactive maintenance
  • Schedule compliance
  • Maintenance cost per unit
  • Spare-parts inventory
  • Production losses attributable to equipment
• Develop annual and long-range maintenance plans and budgets.
• Ensure maintenance activities are properly planned, scheduled, executed and documented.
• Establish appropriate preventive and predictive maintenance programs for critical assets.
• Identify chronic equipment failures and lead root-cause analysis and permanent corrective actions.

2. Reliability & Continuous Improvement

• Develop a site-wide reliability improvement program.
• Identify the plant's critical assets and establish appropriate reliability strategies for each.
• Use data and failure history to prioritize engineering and maintenance investments.
• Lead structured root-cause analysis on major breakdowns and recurring failures.
• Work closely with Operations to eliminate sources of downtime, waste and production inefficiency.
• Support Lean Manufacturing, TPM, Six Sigma and other continuous-improvement initiatives.
• Establish a culture of "fix it once" rather than repeatedly repairing symptoms.
• Drive improvements in equipment changeover, line speed, yield, labor efficiency and overall equipment effectiveness.

3. Food Safety, Sanitation & Regulatory Compliance

• Ensure engineering and maintenance practices support the company's food-safety culture and HACCP systems.
• Partner closely with Quality, Food Safety and Operations to ensure equipment and facility conditions support safe production.
• Ensure equipment modifications, repairs and installations are designed and executed with appropriate hygienic principles.
• Ensure maintenance activities do not create food-safety, foreign-material or product-contamination risks.
• Support compliance with applicable USDA/FSIS requirements, company food-safety standards and customer requirements.
• Participate in HACCP, sanitation, food-safety and regulatory audits as required.
• Ensure engineering projects and equipment changes are appropriately assessed for food-safety impact.
• Develop appropriate procedures for maintenance activities conducted in production and sanitation environments.
• Ensure engineering and maintenance documentation is accurate, current and audit-ready.

FSIS sanitation requirements apply to the construction, equipment, facilities and sanitary operation of official meat and poultry establishments, making engineering and maintenance an important part of the site's food-safety system.

4. Safety

• Make employee safety a fundamental priority within Engineering and Maintenance.
• Ensure compliance with OSHA requirements and company safety policies.
• Maintain robust Lockout/Tagout (LOTO) procedures and training.
• Ensure machine guarding and safeguarding systems are properly designed, installed and maintained.
• Conduct safety reviews of new equipment, modifications and engineering projects.
• Eliminate unsafe maintenance practices and uncontrolled exposure to hazardous energy.
• Investigate maintenance-related incidents and near misses and implement corrective actions.
• Establish safe systems of work for electrical, mechanical, pneumatic, hydraulic, steam, refrigeration and other hazardous-energy systems.

OSHA's hazardous-energy requirements specifically address servicing and maintenance activities where employees may be exposed to unexpected machine startup or release of stored energy, making LOTO and machine safeguarding critical responsibilities for this role.

5. Capital Projects

• Lead the development and execution of the company's engineering capital plan.
• Identify capital projects required to improve:
  • Capacity
  • Productivity
  • Reliability
  • Labor efficiency
  • Food safety
  • Employee safety
  • Quality
  • Energy efficiency
  • Automation
  • New product capability
• Develop business cases and capital expenditure proposals.
• Prepare project budgets, schedules, ROI analyses and implementation plans.
• Lead major equipment installations, line expansions, plant modifications and new facility projects.
• Manage engineering firms, equipment manufacturers, contractors and system integrators.
• Establish appropriate project governance, including scope, budget, schedule, risk and commissioning.
• Ensure new equipment is properly specified, installed, commissioned and handed over to Operations and Maintenance.
• Establish appropriate FAT/SAT, commissioning and validation processes where applicable.
• Ensure projects achieve their intended operational and financial benefits.

6. Automation & Technology

• Develop an engineering roadmap for automation and manufacturing technology.
• Identify opportunities to automate labor-intensive, repetitive or ergonomically challenging processes.
• Partner with Operations and IT on controls, PLCs, SCADA, MES and production-data systems.
• Support integration of robotics, vision systems, automated material handling and advanced packaging technologies.
• Improve collection and use of equipment-performance data.
• Identify opportunities to use predictive analytics and condition monitoring to reduce unplanned downtime.
• Ensure appropriate lifecycle management of controls, PLCs, software and automation systems.

7. Utilities & Infrastructure

Provide leadership for the reliable operation and strategic development of plant utilities and infrastructure, including as applicable:

• Refrigeration systems
• Ammonia refrigeration
• Steam and boilers
• Compressed air
• Electrical distribution
• Water and wastewater
• HVAC
• Process heating and cooling
• Waste handling
• Natural gas
• Backup power
• Building systems
• Fire protection systems

Ensure utilities are reliable, appropriately maintained and capable of supporting current and future production requirements.

Drive energy-reduction initiatives and identify opportunities to reduce utility consumption and operating costs.

8. Maintenance Organization & Talent

• Build a high-performing engineering and maintenance organization.
• Establish clear roles, responsibilities and performance expectations.
• Recruit, develop and retain skilled maintenance and engineering personnel.
• Develop technical training programs for electrical, mechanical, controls, refrigeration and other disciplines.
• Build succession plans for critical technical positions.
• Develop frontline supervisors and managers into strong people leaders.
• Establish appropriate staffing levels and shift coverage.
• Develop relationships with technical schools, apprenticeship programs and external training providers where appropriate.
• Create a culture of accountability, ownership and continuous improvement.

9. Spare Parts & Maintenance Systems

• Establish appropriate critical-spares strategies.
• Optimize maintenance inventory without compromising equipment reliability.
• Establish appropriate min/max levels and stocking strategies for critical components.
• Improve spare-parts identification, storage and inventory accuracy.
• Ensure maintenance BOMs and equipment records are accurate.
• Lead implementation or optimization of CMMS/EAM systems.
• Ensure work orders, maintenance history and equipment records provide useful data for decision-making.

10. Financial Management

• Develop and manage the annual Engineering and Maintenance budget.
• Control maintenance labor, contractor, spare-parts and utility costs.
• Establish cost-per-unit and cost-of-maintenance metrics.
• Identify opportunities to reduce total cost of ownership.
• Evaluate repair-versus-replace decisions.
• Develop financial justification for capital projects.
• Ensure capital expenditure delivers measurable business value.

11. Cross-Functional Leadership

The Director will work closely with:

• Operations
• Production
• Quality
• Food Safety
• Sanitation
• Supply Chain
• Procurement
• Finance
• HR
• IT
• EHS
• Senior Leadership

The successful candidate must be able to translate engineering issues into business and operational outcomes, rather than operating engineering as an isolated technical function.

Key Performance Indicators

Performance will be measured against a combination of operational, financial, safety and people metrics, including:

• OEE improvement
• Reduction in unplanned downtime
• MTBF improvement
• MTTR reduction
• Preventive-maintenance compliance
• Planned maintenance percentage
• Maintenance cost per unit
• Capital-project delivery against budget and schedule
• Capital-project ROI
• Utility cost reduction
• Energy consumption
• Safety performance
• LOTO compliance
• Food-safety performance
• Audit performance
• Equipment reliability
• Spare-parts inventory performance
• Employee engagement and retention

Candidate Profile

Required Experience

• Typically 10+ years of progressive engineering and maintenance experience in manufacturing.
• Significant leadership experience managing engineering and maintenance teams.
• Strong experience within food manufacturing, meat, poultry, protein, dairy or another highly regulated manufacturing environment.
• Demonstrated experience leading major capital projects.
• Strong experience with preventive and predictive maintenance systems.
• Demonstrated experience improving equipment reliability and manufacturing performance.
• Strong understanding of industrial automation and controls.
• Experience managing contractors, OEMs and engineering consultants.
• Experience managing significant operating and capital budgets.