Reliability Vibration Technician

Reliability Vibration Technician | Rahway, NJ

Heartline Staffing, in partnership with Purple Cow Recruiting, is seeking an experienced Reliability Vibration Technician for a highly technical, full-time opportunity supporting a large life-sciences campus in Rahway, New Jersey. This position serves as a technical expert in predictive maintenance, condition monitoring, vibration analysis, rotating-equipment diagnostics, and reliability engineering.

The Reliability Vibration Technician performs advanced condition monitoring and equipment diagnostics while helping establish and improve long-term asset-reliability strategies. The position works closely with Maintenance, Engineering, and Operations to identify developing equipment failures before breakdown, improve asset uptime, reduce lifecycle costs, and eliminate recurring reliability problems. This role requires substantial hands-on experience diagnosing rotating equipment using vibration data and other predictive-maintenance technologies.

The technician will also help organize predictive-maintenance activities, establish best practices, mentor less-experienced technicians, and support continuous-improvement initiatives across a large multi-building campus.

Responsibilities include:

• Perform advanced vibration analysis on rotating equipment
• Analyze motors, pumps, fans, compressors, gearboxes, and related mechanical assets
• Interpret FFT / spectral data
• Interpret time-waveform data
• Perform phase analysis
• Evaluate resonance and critical-speed conditions
• Analyze vibration trends and condition-monitoring data
• Diagnose bearing failures
• Diagnose misalignment
• Diagnose imbalance
• Identify looseness, resonance, and other mechanical failure modes
• Identify electrical anomalies affecting rotating equipment where applicable
• Determine root causes of abnormal equipment conditions
• Recommend corrective maintenance actions
• Document findings and communicate technical recommendations to Maintenance, Engineering, and Operations

Support and lead predictive-maintenance activities, develop and refine condition-based monitoring programs, support Reliability-Centered Maintenance strategies, establish equipment-monitoring priorities, analyze equipment-condition trends, help define inspection frequencies and monitoring strategies, improve predictive-maintenance workflows and best practices, use data to identify developing failures before functional breakdown, help prioritize corrective actions based on equipment condition and business risk, support long-term reliability strategy and continuous improvement.

Lead and support Root Cause Failure Analysis (RCFA), investigate recurring equipment failures, identify underlying mechanical or operational causes, recommend permanent corrective actions, support failure-elimination strategies, track reliability improvements following corrective action, help reduce repeat failures and unplanned downtime, support improved asset lifecycle performance.

The role also supports infrared thermographic inspections across electrical, mechanical, and process systems. Relevant responsibilities may include conducting thermal inspections, identifying abnormal thermal patterns, evaluating electrical and mechanical hot spots, interpreting IR findings alongside vibration data, documenting thermography findings, recommending follow-up maintenance actions. Infrared Thermography certification or practical thermography experience is preferred but is not required.

This position offers a high degree of ownership within a developing predictive-maintenance program. The successful candidate will help establish standards, prioritize work, improve processes, and strengthen the technical capabilities of the reliability team. Responsibilities may include lead or help lead predictive-maintenance program activities, establish technical standards and best practices, organize predictive-maintenance workloads, mentor vibration and reliability technicians, develop team vibration-analysis capabilities, support technical training initiatives, serve as a technical escalation resource, help build a proactive reliability culture.

Partner with Maintenance teams, Partner with Engineering teams, Partner with Operations teams, support capital projects and equipment upgrades, provide equipment-condition input during reliability decisions, communicate technical findings to both technical and operational stakeholders, support corrective-action planning, coordinate reliability initiatives across multiple buildings and departments.

This position supports a large life-sciences campus where accurate documentation, structured work processes, and strong technical discipline are important. Experience in pharmaceutical, life sciences, chemical, food and beverage, energy, healthcare, or another regulated environment is highly valuable. The position supports a large campus with more than 65 buildings, providing significant exposure to complex facility systems, rotating assets, reliability initiatives, and long-term program…