AmeriQual Foods - Director of Maintenance and Engineering

Key Responsibilities

Leadership, Strategy, and Department Management   

• Lead the Maintenance and Engineering team, including maintenance managers, engineers, and  technicians.
• Develop staff, build technical capability, and foster a team culture grounded in accountability, ownership, responsiveness, continuous learning, and high performance
• Develop and execute short- and long-term maintenance and engineering strategies that support reliability, food and employee safety, quality, cost control, capacity, and growth.
• Establish priorities, allocate resources, and develop action plans to support operational needs, planned shutdowns, commissioning activities, emergency repairs, and CI initiatives.
• Develop, manage, and monitor maintenance, engineering, utility, contractor, MRO, capital, and expense budgets.

Engineering, Capital Projects, and Facility Improvement

• Provide leadership for plant engineering activities and capital projects, including scope, budgeting, specifications, installation, startup, commissioning, modification, and improvement of production, packaging, utility, and facility systems.
• Ensure new and modified equipment, facility layouts, utilities, and processes are designed and implemented with appropriate consideration for food and employee safety, GMP compliance, maintainability, reliability, ergonomics, and operational efficiency.
• Oversee vendor, OEM, engineering firm, contractor, and service-provider relationships to ensure work is completed safely, correctly, on schedule, and within approved scope and budget.

Maintenance, Reliability, and Operational Support

• Drive uptime, equipment reliability, asset care, and production support
• Build and maintain technical competencies within the maintenance and engineering teams to support evolving technology, equipment, automation, utilities, controls, and facility systems and to ensure timely response to maintenance or engineering issues.
• Use data and performance indicators to identify trends, prioritize work, evaluate project results, and drive measurable improvement.
• Support compliance with applicable OSHA, environmental, building, fire, electrical, machine guarding, lockout/tagout, pressure vessel/boiler, refrigeration, wastewater, and other regulatory or company requirements.
• Promote safe work practices for employees, contractors, and visitors, including pre-job planning, job hazard analysis, permit coordination, equipment guarding, LOTO expectations, confined space or hot work requirements, and contractor safety expectations as applicable.
• Support audits, inspections, customer visits, internal investigations, corrective actions, and continuous improvement initiatives related to maintenance, engineering, food safety, quality, safety, and facilities.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering, maintenance management, industrial technology, or related field
• 10 years of progressive maintenance, engineering, reliability, or plant leadership experience supporting manufacturing in a highly regulated environment; food, beverage, consumer products, or similar manufacturing experience strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated experience leading maintenance and engineering teams, including technicians, supervisors, project resources, contractors, vendors, and cross-functional project teams.
• Strong knowledge of engineering and maintenance concepts, project management, capital planning, reliability practices, CMMS utilization, MRO/spare parts strategy, financial management, and continuous improvement methods.
• Experience managing capital projects from concept through installation, startup, commissioning, documentation, training, and operational handoff.
• Demonstrated ability to develop and implement innovative technical solutions while balancing safety, quality, reliability, operational needs, and cost.
• Demonstrated ability to drive ownership through leading by example, building accountability, and developing team capability.
• Ability to work professionally and effectively with employees, senior leaders, customers, suppliers, contractors, auditors, and regulatory representatives.
• Excellent time management skills with the ability to prioritize, multitask, anticipate changing operational or project needs, and meet deadlines in a fast-paced manufacturing environment.
• Strong communication, coaching, and motivational skills.

Physical Requirements: 

This role includes time in both office and production environments.  You should be comfortable sitting, standing, walking, using standard office equipment and maintenance/engineering tools, and lifting up to 50 lbs.  You’ll also spend time on the production floor, which includes exposure to varying temperatures and common food allergens.  Duties include intricate repairs, which will require working in, on, and around complex machinery and packaging systems, requiring a high level of manual dexterity.