Director, Engineering & Maintenance

Overview

Director, Engineering & Maintenance in Albuquerque, NM

Build your future at Curia, where our work has the power to save lives. Curia is a global contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) with over 30 years of experience partnering with pharmaceutical and biotech companies to provide life-saving treatments to patients. We are on a mission to advance our customers’ therapies from curiosity to cure and improve patients’ lives.

Summary:

The Director of Engineering and Maintenance provides strategic leadership for all engineering, facilities, utilities, and maintenance functions within a sterile pharmaceutical manufacturing operation. This role ensures facility and equipment reliability, regulatory compliance, capital project execution, and continuous improvement initiatives that support aseptic manufacturing operations. The Director serves as the site leader for engineering strategy, asset lifecycle management, utilities reliability (e.g., WFI, clean steam, HVAC, compressed gases), and facilities infrastructure.

This individual ensures compliance with cGMP, FDA, OSHA, and other applicable regulatory requirements while driving operational excellence, cost control, and long-term site readiness. The role is a key member of site leadership and serves as the primary engineering representative during regulatory inspections and customer audits.

• Strategic and Technical Leadership:
  Develop and execute the site engineering strategy aligned with business and manufacturing objectives. Provide oversight of facilities, utilities, process equipment, and infrastructure supporting aseptic processing and sterile manufacturing. Ensure robust asset lifecycle management including design, specification, installation, qualification (IQ/OQ/PQ), maintenance, and decommissioning. Lead reliability engineering initiatives to improve uptime and system performance.

• Regulatory and Compliance Oversight:
  Ensure full compliance with cGMP, FDA, OSHA, EPA, and other applicable regulations. Maintain inspection readiness for FDA and other regulatory agencies. Serve as engineering lead during regulatory inspections and audit responses. Ensure engineering documentation, change control, deviations, CAPAs, and validation activities meet regulatory expectations.

• Maintenance and Reliability:
  Oversee preventive, predictive, and corrective maintenance programs. Drive implementation and optimization of CMMS and maintenance systems (downtime tracking, PM optimization, spare parts management). Establish and monitor KPIs related to equipment reliability, maintenance effectiveness, and compliance metrics. Lead root cause investigations for critical equipment failures.

• Capital Projects and Budget Management:
  Develop and manage the annual operating and capital budgets. Lead capital project planning and execution, ensuring projects are delivered safely, on time, within scope, and within budget. Provide technical and financial justification for capital expenditures. Manage contractors, vendors, and engineering service providers.

• Environmental, Health and Safety:
  Partner with EHS to ensure safe design and operation of facilities and utilities. Champion a proactive safety culture across engineering and maintenance teams. Ensure compliance with OSHA and environmental regulations.

• Master’s degree in Mechanical, Chemical, Electrical Engineering, or related field with minimum 10 years of progressive engineering experience in pharmaceutical, biologics, or other highly regulated manufacturing environments and at least 5 years of leadership experience in engineering, maintenance, or technical teams (preferred).

• Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical, Chemical, or Electrical Engineering or related field with minimum 8 years of progressive engineering experience in regulated manufacturing environments and at least 5 years of leadership experience in engineering, maintenance, or technical teams.

• High school diploma with relevant military engineering, facilities, or technical leadership experience in regulated, mission-critical environments with minimum 14 years of progressive…