Maintenance Manager (Director)

Our client is a growing food manufacturing (CPG contract manufacturing) company seeking a "hands-on" Technical Operations manager.

A successful candidate will shape the technical operating model, strengthen preventive maintenance and reliability disciplines, improve equipment uptime and performance, upgrade technician capability, and support increasingly automated and complex packaging operations across the business.

The role sits at the intersection of uptime, labor productivity, technical problem solving, equipment capability, customer responsiveness, food-safety compliance, and organizational development. It calls for a leader who combines hands-on technical credibility with the ability to build systems, structure, and accountability in a legacy environment that is becoming more sophisticated.

Primary Accountabilities

• Build a stronger, more structured, and more scalable maintenance and reliability function that improves uptime, reduces avoidable downtime, supports increasing automation, and decreases dependence on tribal knowledge and reactive heroics.
• Lead maintenance and reliability operations across multiple facilities in a way that improves line readiness, equipment performance, changeover execution, and technical consistency in a high-changeover, high-variability co-pack environment.
• Serve as the senior technical escalation point for complex equipment failures, chronic reliability problems, and critical downtime events, bringing hands-on troubleshooting leadership that earns credibility with technicians and operations leaders alike.
• Design and implement a more disciplined preventive-maintenance and reliability system, including maintenance scheduling, PM compliance, spare-parts management, critical-parts availability, and equipment lifecycle planning.
• Develop and strengthen the technician workforce across experience levels, including early-career technical talent and tenured legacy technicians, while ensuring effective knowledge transfer from senior team members nearing retirement.
• Partner closely with engineering and operations to improve equipment sourcing, startup readiness, automation integration, line efficiency, and changeover performance.
• Own the parts, procurement, and technical-vendor support strategy, including sourcing, outside technical resources, OEM relationships, and external troubleshooting support.
• Support food-safety, quality, and regulatory expectations by ensuring technical operations align with the standards required in a food-packaging environment.
• Help move the organization from a more reactive technician-driven model to a professionalized technical-operations capability with clearer standards, accountability, operating discipline, and repeatable processes.
• Provide visible leadership across campuses and buildings, maintaining strong physical presence where the work happens and helping create a high-accountability, solutions-oriented technical culture.

Performance Objectives

First 6 Months

Establish trust and technical credibility with the SVP of Operations (direct supervisor), maintenance team, operations leaders, engineering partners, and site leadership; assess the current state of equipment reliability, technician capability, PM discipline, spare-parts practices, chronic downtime drivers, and external vendor support; and define a practical roadmap for stabilizing and upgrading technical operations across sites.

Measures of Success

• Clear assessment of current-state technical maturity and key reliability gaps
• Visible, respected leadership presence on the floor and across facilities
• Improved responsiveness and leadership during major downtime events
• Prioritized near-term action plan around PM, staffing, parts, and chronic equipment issues
• Early improvement in technician accountability, communication, and operating cadence

First 12 Months

Implement a stronger preventive-maintenance and reliability structure; improve technician deployment and capability; formalize parts and vendor-management practices; reduce repeat breakdowns and avoidable downtime; improve line readiness and changeover support; and create measurable progress in technical systems, workforce development, and equipment performance.

Measures of Success

• Improved PM completion and scheduling discipline
• Reduction in recurring downtime and chronic equipment issues
• Stronger technician bench and clearer role expectations
• Better spare-parts control, availability, and procurement effectiveness
• Improved uptime, responsiveness, and support to operations
• Stronger collaboration with engineering, operations, and quality

24+ Months

Build a durable, scalable technical-operations platform that supports the company automation journey, customer growth, and increasing operational complexity; institutionalize reliability standards and succession depth; and position the business for a more sophisticated and professional future-state operating model.

Measures of Success

• More predictable equipment performance across sites
• A more mature preventive-maintenance and reliability system
• Reduced dependency on individual heroics and tribal knowledge
• Stronger technical succession bench and internal capability development
• Better support for automation, customer growth, and multi-site complexity
• A more professionalized, scalable technical-operations function enterprise-wide

Ideal Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate is a technically deep, hands-on, floor-oriented maintenance and reliability leader who can build function without becoming overly bureaucratic. This person should be equally comfortable diagnosing a complex mechanical or electrical problem, leading a technician team, and introducing the systems, discipline, and structure required to support growth.

The successful candidate will combine technical range, urgency, humility, leadership maturity, and practical operating judgment. This person must be able to improve a legacy environment without alienating the people who built it, and must have the confidence and credibility to lead in a high-mix, fast-moving food-packaging context.

Required Experience and Capabilities

Food manufacturing or food packaging experience

• Strong maintenance, reliability, engineering, or technical-operations leadership experience in food manufacturing, food packaging, contract packaging, or a similarly regulated environment. Food exposure is strongly preferred due to the quality, safety, and compliance requirements involved.

High-speed packaging and automation exposure

• Hands-on experience with high-speed packaging lines, advanced equipment, automation, and technical operating environments where uptime and adaptability matter.

High-mix / high-changeover operating fluency

• Experience in dynamic production settings with frequent product changeovers, shorter runs, and customer-driven operating variability rather than static, continuous-run manufacturing.

Hands-on technical depth

• Strong mechanical, electrical, and systems troubleshooting capability. Must be seen as a real technical leader, not simply an administrative manager.

Maintenance leadership

• Proven ability to lead maintenance teams, improve accountability, build bench strength, and raise performance within a workforce that may include both early-career and highly tenured technicians.

Preventive maintenance and reliability systems

• Experience building or upgrading PM programs, maintenance scheduling, spare-parts processes, and equipment-lifecycle disciplines in environments where structure was limited or inconsistent.

Team development and knowledge transfer

• Capability to coach, mentor, and develop technical talent while protecting institutional knowledge and creating succession depth as senior technicians retire.

Vendor and external-resource management

• Strong ability to build productive relationships with OEMs, technical vendors, outside service providers, and parts suppliers to increase responsiveness and support.

Multi-site leadership

• Experience operating across multiple buildings, facilities, or campuses with a high level of visibility, responsiveness, and cross-site coordination.