Director of Maintenance

The Maintenance Director is a pivotal leadership position responsible for driving the performance, reliability, and transformation of the maintenance organization within a high-volume food manufacturing environment. This leader will oversee the maintenance strategy for a complex operation with 500+ employees, ensuring equipment reliability, facility readiness, safety, regulatory compliance, cost effectiveness, and operational continuity.

This position requires a high-accountability, high-influence leader who can establish clear expectations, develop leaders, and drive results within the Maintenance organization while building strong partnerships and influencing decisions across the broader organization.

The successful candidate will bring significant leadership experience within food manufacturing and a proven history of leading maintenance organizations through growth, transformation, operational change, and continuous improvement.

This is not simply a role focused on keeping equipment running. The Maintenance Director will help shape the future of the operation by building a proactive, data-driven, highly accountable maintenance culture that supports the organization's strategic objectives.

• Provide strategic and operational leadership for the Maintenance organization, establishing a culture of accountability, ownership, urgency, and continuous improvement.
• Set clear expectations for maintenance leaders and team members while holding the organization accountable for performance, execution, and results.
• Lead, coach, develop, and retain a strong maintenance leadership team capable of effectively managing day-to-day operations while building long-term capability.
• Establish performance expectations and meaningful KPIs for maintenance leadership and teams, including equipment reliability, downtime, PM compliance, work order completion, response time, backlog, cost, and safety.
• Address performance issues directly and consistently while maintaining a culture of respect, transparency, and development.
• Build organizational capability through succession planning, talent development, technical training, and leadership development.
• Create an environment where Maintenance is viewed as a strategic business partner rather than solely a reactive service function.

• Build strong, collaborative relationships with Operations, Quality, Safety, Engineering, Supply Chain, Finance, HR, and other functional leaders.
• Influence without relying solely on positional authority, creating alignment around maintenance priorities and organizational objectives.
• Partner closely with Operations leadership to improve equipment reliability, production efficiency, line performance, and overall plant productivity.
• Challenge the organization appropriately when maintenance, reliability, safety, or operational risks require attention.
• Serve as a trusted advisor to the site leadership team regarding equipment reliability, capital needs, facility requirements, risk, and long-term asset strategy.
• Translate technical maintenance issues into clear business implications and recommendations for senior leadership.
• Establish credibility across all levels of the organization and effectively communicate with hourly employees, front-line leaders, peers, and executive leadership.

• Develop and execute a comprehensive maintenance and reliability strategy aligned with business growth and operational objectives.
• Drive the organization from a reactive maintenance culture toward proactive and predictive maintenance practices.
• Establish and continuously improve preventive and predictive maintenance programs.
• Improve equipment uptime, reliability, asset utilization, and overall equipment effectiveness.
• Analyze downtime, recurring failures, work orders, maintenance trends, and equipment performance to identify systemic opportunities.
• Lead root-cause analysis and corrective action efforts for chronic equipment and process failures.
• Develop asset management strategies that prioritize critical equipment and minimize operational risk.
• Ensure maintenance systems, processes, documentation, and standards are consistently executed across the organization.
• Lead Maintenance through a period of significant organizational transformation and growth.
• Challenge existing processes and ways of working while creating sustainable solutions rather than temporary fixes.
• Identify opportunities to improve…