Director of Maintenance & Reliability

Director of Maintenance & Reliability

Rise Baking Company, LLC Worcester, Massachusetts, United States

Build and lead a company-wide maintenance reliability organization that enables consistent, high-performing asset management across all manufacturing sites. Act as a strategic partner to Operations, Supply Chain, and Capital Planning, ensuring reliability efforts translate into sustained productivity, lower maintenance and capital spend, and improved operational resilience across the network.

• Stand up and lead a new enterprise Maintenance Reliability organization, defining its mission, structure, governance, and operating cadence
• Establish and deploy a standardized reliability operating model that supports Maintenance Managers with consistent tools, processes, and expectations across all sites
• Develop and govern enterprise asset strategies for critical and common equipment, including preventive, predictive, and condition-based maintenance standards
• Define and implement enterprise rebuild and life cycle strategies for high-value assets to optimize total cost of ownership, reduce unplanned downtime, and defer capital replacement
• Partner with site Maintenance Managers to improve maintenance planning, scheduling, and execution discipline, including work management, shutdown planning, and backlog control
• Own enterprise CMMS strategy and standards, ensuring data integrity, consistent asset hierarchies, and effective use of maintenance data to drive decisions
• Lead the development and deployment of maintenance and reliability KPIs (e.g., uptime, OEE losses, PM compliance, maintenance cost, rebuild effectiveness) and use them to prioritize improvement efforts
• Provide reliability leadership and technical oversight for capital projects, equipment rebuilds, and major overhauls, ensuring effective early management and rapid stabilization
• Build enterprise capability through training, coaching, and mentoring of Maintenance Managers, planners, and reliability resources
• Serve as the enterprise subject matter leader for precision maintenance, root cause failure analysis, and reliability-centered maintenance practice
• Partner with Operations, Finance, and Supply Chain to ensure reliability initiatives deliver measurable cost reduction, improved throughput, and capital efficiency
• Ensure all maintenance reliability practices support food safety, quality, environmental, and workplace safety requirements
• Stay current on emerging reliability technologies, predictive maintenance methods, and asset management best practices, selectively integrating those that deliver business value
• Support food safety program, quality standards, and legality of manufactured products
• Perform other job-related duties as assigned

• Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, industrial engineering, or a related technical discipline; equivalent experience considered
• Minimum 10+ years of progressive experience in maintenance, reliability, or engineering leadership within manufacturing environments
• Demonstrated success leading multi-site reliability programs or enterprise asset management initiatives
• Experience in food manufacturing or regulated manufacturing environments preferred
• Strong understanding of manufacturing performance metrics and maintenance cost drivers
• Deep expertise in maintenance and reliability methodologies, including RCM, TPM, precision maintenance, root cause analysis, and predictive maintenance
• Strong working knowledge of CMMS systems, asset hierarchies, maintenance planning and scheduling, and spare parts strategies
• Proven ability to develop and execute equipment rebuild and life cycle strategies at scale
• Proven ability to build organizations and systems from the ground up
• Strong enterprise-level influence skills with the ability to lead through matrixed relationships rather than direct authority
• Strategic thinker with strong analytical skills and a bias for action and results
• Effective communicator capable of engaging frontline maintenance teams, plant leadership, and executive stakeholders
• Comfortable operating in a…