Maintenance Engineer - Food Manufacturing

Job Summary

We are seeking a Maintenance Engineer to join a high-performing manufacturing site within a large-scale food production environment. This role is responsible for improving equipment reliability, enhancing maintenance strategies, and reducing unplanned downtime across the operation.

Working closely with Production, Engineering, and Operational teams, the successful candidate will use data analysis, continuous improvement methodologies, and hands-on problem-solving to maximise equipment availability, plant performance, safety, and cost efficiency.

The role will support the delivery of proactive maintenance systems, equipment improvement initiatives, and operator asset care programmes, while helping to build technical capability across engineering and production teams.

Key Responsibilities

• Support site-wide reliability and continuous improvement initiatives focused on equipment performance and operational efficiency.
• Lead and maintain structured maintenance planning and scheduling activities to optimise engineering resource and minimise downtime.
• Manage preventive maintenance plans for designated production areas, ensuring maintenance tasks are effective, completed on time, and continuously improved.
• Monitor and analyse reliability performance using key maintenance metrics such as downtime, mean time between failures (MTBF), mean time to repair (MTTR), and overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).
• Develop, review, and improve equipment care standards including preventive maintenance routines, cleaning and inspection activities, lubrication standards, and defect management processes.
• Drive consistency and compliance across maintenance systems and engineering standards to maximise asset life and operational performance.
• Identify opportunities to improve equipment reliability through modifications, upgrades, and engineering improvements.
• Work collaboratively with production teams to develop operator-led equipment care and basic maintenance practices.
• Facilitate root cause analysis activities for equipment failures and recurring issues, implementing corrective and preventative actions to reduce repeat breakdowns.
• Use data-driven methods to identify chronic equipment losses and deliver sustainable improvements.
• Conduct regular audits and system health checks to ensure standards are being followed and opportunities for improvement are identified.
• Ensure engineering activities are completed in line with health & safety, quality, and food safety requirements.
• Support operational performance review meetings and contribute to site performance improvement plans.
• Assist with additional engineering and maintenance activities as required.

Candidate Requirements

Qualifications

• Engineering qualification preferred, or equivalent hands-on engineering experience within a manufacturing environment.

Experience & Skills

• Previous experience within maintenance, engineering, or production leadership in a fast-paced manufacturing environment, ideally food or FMCG manufacturing.
• Strong understanding of planned preventive maintenance and reliability improvement methodologies.
• Experience using maintenance KPIs and performance data to drive operational improvements.
• Ability to lead problem-solving and root cause analysis activities.
• Strong stakeholder engagement and communication skills, with the ability to coach and support both engineering and operational teams.
• Experience developing and improving maintenance systems, standards, and ways of working.
• Continuous improvement mindset with a proactive and hands-on approach.