Maintenance Manager

Benton Mill Maintenance Manager

The Maintenance Manager provides hands-on leadership for the Benton stave mill maintenance function. This role is responsible for driving equipment reliability, supporting safe maintenance execution, and ensuring the mill's assets are ready to meet production demands. The position calls for someone who can take ownership of priorities, respond quickly to operational issues, and work closely with production, quality, safety, engineering, and plant leadership to keep the facility running safely and efficiently. In line with Organization Context, this draft also reflects your company's strong safety-first culture, focuses on quality, and emphasis on continuous improvement.

Total compensation, including salary and bonus, ranges from $110,000 to $140,000 based on experience and skills.

Core Responsibilities for the Maintenance Manager Role:

• Lead maintenance activities across production equipment, utilities, buildings, grounds, and material-handling systems
• Drive safe maintenance execution in alignment with company requirements and applicable OSHA and environmental standards
• Oversee preventive and predictive maintenance programs, adjusting tasks and schedules based on equipment condition, failure history, and operational risk
• Manage the work order process, including prioritization, planning, labor coordination, parts readiness, scheduling, completion tracking, and backlog control
• Lead troubleshooting and root-cause analysis for repeat failures, downtime events, quality losses, and equipment constraints, ensuring corrective actions are effective
• Coordinate planned downtime and shutdown work with production leadership to complete critical maintenance with minimal disruption
• Establish and reinforce standards for lubrication, alignment, inspection, calibration, guarding, and safe return to service
• Provide visible floor leadership, clarify daily priorities, and ensure accountability for work quality, documentation, and shift handoffs
• Lead, coach, and develop maintenance supervisors, technicians, apprentices, and other assigned personnel
• Coordinate contractors and technical vendors, confirming safety orientation, scope alignment, qualifications, permits, and work acceptance requirements

Required Skills & Abilities:

• Strong mechanical, electrical, controls, hydraulic, and pneumatic troubleshooting capability
• Ability to make timely decisions, set direction, and take ownership of maintenance priorities
• Comfort working in a fast-moving manufacturing environment with changing operational demands
• Practical approach to problem-solving, with the ability to move from immediate issue response to longer-term reliability improvement
• Clear communication skills for coordinating across departments and aligning teams around maintenance priorities
• Working knowledge of preventive maintenance systems, work order processes, maintenance documentation, spare-parts control, and maintenance budgeting
• Ability to balance independent decision-making with cross-functional partnership
• Ability to interpret electrical schematics, mechanical drawings, equipment manuals, and technical specifications
• Knowledge of recognized industrial safety practices, including lockout/tagout, PPE, machine guarding, electrical safety, hot work, confined space, and fall protection
• Ability to organize competing priorities and work effectively with hourly employees, supervisors, managers, contractors, and technical resources

Other Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in engineering, industrial technology, maintenance, manufacturing, or a related field preferred; relevant technical education, certifications, or equivalent experience will also be considered
• Five or more years of progressive industrial maintenance or manufacturing experience, including at least two years leading maintenance employees, supervisors, projects, or contractors
• Demonstrated knowledge of mechanical power transmission, industrial electrical systems, motors and drives, controls/PLCs, hydraulics, pneumatics, welding/fabrication, and equipment troubleshooting
• Ability to work in the United States without company sponsorship
• Experience in a stave mill, sawmill, wood-products operation, primary wood processing, or another heavy industrial manufacturing environment preferred
• Engineering or technical degree, or industrial maintenance, electrical, controls, reliability, or related technical credentials preferred
• Experience with Allen-Bradley or comparable PLC platforms, industrial networks, VFDs, sensors, safety circuits, and automated material-handling systems preferred
• Experience using reliability and problem-solving methods such as root-cause analysis, failure analysis, condition monitoring, precision maintenance, and preventive-maintenance optimization preferred
• Availability to support off-shift or emergency maintenance needs based on production requirements

Benefits: Independent Stave Company offers competitive compensation and benefits to employees at each of our facilities. Domestic benefits include:

• Competitive pay
• Paid weekly
• Overtime available
• Continuing education opportunities
• 401(k) with an employer match equal to 50% of eligible contributions
• Medical Insurance (Deductible: $750 for single, $1500 for family)
• Insurance eligibility after 30 days
• Cafeteria plan including dental, vision, short-term and long-term disability, and life insurance
• Paid vacation after 30 days

*Some benefits are available only to full-time employees or after designated waiting periods.

We maintain a drug-free workplace and perform substance abuse testing, and background verification checks as permitted by state law.

Independent Stave Company is an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.