Maintenance Team Lead

Hands-on, working lead responsible for supporting safe, reliable, and efficient operation of plant equipment. This role provides day-to-day direction to maintenance technicians while actively performing maintenance work, coordinating priorities with Production, and ensuring all work is completed safely and documented in Fiix CMMS. The Team Leader promotes a strong safety culture, supports preventive and corrective maintenance efforts, and helps drive equipment reliability and continuous improvement on the shop floor.

Roles and Responsibilities

• Serve as a working lead for the hourly maintenance team, supporting daily maintenance activities while providing direction and oversight to technicians.
• Lead daily safety huddles and reinforce IFS safety standards, PPE requirements, lockout/tagout, permits and Job Hazard Analyses (JHAs).
• Promote a strong safety culture by ensuring all maintenance work is performed in compliance with IFS policies and regulatory requirements; participate in incident investigations as needed.
• Coordinate daily maintenance priorities with Production and Operations to support schedule attainment and minimize unplanned downtime.
• Create, assign, and close maintenance work orders in Fiix CMMS, ensuring accuracy, proper documentation, labor tracking, and parts checkout.
• Support preventive, predictive, and corrective maintenance activities by ensuring PMs are completed on time and breakdowns are addressed safely and efficiently.
• Foster a proactive maintenance mindset focused on inspections, reliability, and continuous improvement of equipment performance.
• Perform and support root cause analysis on equipment failures and repeat issues; ensure corrective actions are implemented and tracked.
• Track and review equipment downtime, work order history and repeat repairs to identify opportunities for improvement.
• Monitor technician performance to ensure work is completed safely, efficiently, and to standard; ensure follow-up work orders are created for temporary repairs or parts delays.
• Assist the Maintenance Manager in planning and scheduling maintenance activities, shutdown work and PM optimization.
• Oversee contractors and vendors performing maintenance work to ensure compliance with IFS safety rules, PPE, JHAs and site expectations.
• Support spare parts management by verifying parts usage, identifying critical spares, and coordinating with maintenance leadership on ordering needs.
• Communicate equipment status, risks and maintenance needs clearly to Production, Maintenance, and other stakeholders.
• Support training, onboarding and mentoring of maintenance technicians to build skill levels and team accountability.

Qualifications and Education Requirements:

• High school diploma or GED required; Associate’s degree in Industrial Technology, Mechanical/Electrical discipline, or related field preferred.
• 3 years of experience in industrial or manufacturing maintenance, with supervisory or lead experience preferred.
• Strong working knowledge of mechanical, electrical and instrumentation systems.
• Proficiency with CMMS platforms (Fiix, SAP PM, or similar) and maintenance data tracking.
• Strong organizational skills with attention to detail and documentation accuracy.
• Ability to prioritize multiple tasks and work effectively in a fast-paced, production-driven environment.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite (Excel, Word, Outlook)..

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in a hybrid hands-on maintenance and leadership role.
• Demonstrated experience with preventive, predictive, and reliability-centered maintenance programs.
• Familiarity with maintenance KPIs, data analysis, and continuous improvement methodologies.
• Experience managing contractors and vendor performance.
• Strong problem-solving skills with structured root cause analysis experience.

Safety-first mindset with experience leading safety initiatives and investigations.