Manager of Maintenance, Reliability & Engineering – North America

About

The Manager of Maintenance, Reliability & Engineering – North America is responsible for providing regional leadership, oversight, and accountability for maintenance, reliability, plant engineering, and related operational technology activities across North American manufacturing facilities. This role ensures that each plant’s maintenance and engineering supervisors, plant engineers, maintenance technicians, and assigned teams are effectively managing equipment reliability, minimizing downtime, supporting safe operations, and executing engineering projects that improve plant performance.

This position is expected to establish clear standards, expectations, and accountability across all plants to ensure maintenance and engineering work is planned, completed, and accurately documented in the CMMS system, including uptime and downtime. The role partners closely with Plant Managers, Operations, Supply Chain, Engineering, Safety, Quality, Purchasing, IT/Operational Technology, and external contractors to support production needs, protect customer delivery commitments, and improve long-term plant reliability across North America.

Responsibilities

• Provide leadership, direction, and oversight to plant-level maintenance and engineering supervisors to ensure maintenance teams are effectively managed at each facility.
• Ensure each plant has clear daily maintenance priorities and that work is completed safely, efficiently, and on schedule.
• Establish consistent expectations across all plants for work quality, urgency, communication, accountability, documentation, and follow-through.
• Monitor maintenance activity, response times, equipment issues, downtime, and completion of assigned work across all facilities.
• Ensure plant level maintenance leaders are properly training, equipping, and holding their teams accountable for performance.
• Provide technical and leadership guidance to plant maintenance supervisors, plant engineers, maintenance technicians, and other team members as needed.
• Ensure each maintenance team supports the overall needs of its plant in a positive, professional, collaborative, and solution-oriented manner.
• Develop, standardize, and oversee preventive, predictive, and reliability-based maintenance programs across North American facilities.
• Ensure each plant is actively driving reliability improvements to reduce unplanned downtime, repeat failures, and production interruptions.
• Ensure maintenance plans, schedules, and resource requirements are aligned with production needs at each facility.
• Review equipment history, downtime trends, maintenance costs, SCADA data, and recurring issues across plants to identify root causes, reliability risks, corrective actions, and improvement opportunities.
• Ensure plant teams conduct root cause analysis for equipment failures and implement sustainable countermeasures.
• Support reliability-centered maintenance, condition-based monitoring, predictive maintenance, and asset lifecycle improvement initiatives across the region.
• Ensure plant teams recommend and implement changes to equipment, processes, spare parts, or maintenance practices to improve safety, uptime, reliability, production efficiency, and operating performance.
• Ensure preventive maintenance tasks are completed on time and properly documented at each plant.
• Provide oversight and support for plant engineering, reliability, and capital projects across North America from concept through implementation.
• Support equipment design reviews, layout planning, installation, commissioning, validation, and post-project follow-up across facilities.

Technical Engineering Support and Documentation

• Provide regional technical oversight and support to help plants analyze and resolve complex equipment and reliability issues.
• Ensure plant teams review drawings, perform technical calculations where required, and ensure equipment modifications meet engineering, safety, quality, and regulatory standards.
• Ensure engineering documentation, equipment standards, as-built drawings, technical files, and equipment records are maintained consistently across plants.
• Review and use reports on downtime trends, reliability metrics, corrective actions, project status, and equipment performance to support regional decision-making.

CMMS, Downtime, and Documentation Compliance

• Establish and enforce CMMS expectations across all North American plants for maintenance and engineering work.
• Ensure plant teams accurately enter and maintain work orders, preventive maintenance, corrective maintenance, project work, contractor work, labor time, parts usage, equipment history, and follow-up actions in the CMMS.
• Ensure equipment uptime and downtime are documented accurately and consistently in the CMMS to support reporting, planning, reliability analysis, customer delivery planning, and capital decision-making.
• Review CMMS compliance and open work orders across plants and ensure prioritization is based on safety, production impact, reliability, customer commitments, and urgency.
• Oversee the use of SCADA information and other operational data across North American facilities, including equipment performance, uptime, downtime, cycle times, process conditions, and production reliability.
• Partner with Operations, Engineering, and IT/Operational Technology to review data trends and identify opportunities to improve equipment performance, process stability, production efficiency, and product quality.
• Ensure downtime is planned to minimize disruption to production schedules, customer orders, and delivery commitments.
• Require plant teams to review customer delivery risks with Supply Chain and Operations before scheduling significant maintenance work or engineering projects.
• Support contingency planning when equipment issues or unplanned downtime may affect order fulfillment or customer delivery dates.
• Partner with Plant Managers, Operations, Supply Chain, Quality, Safety, Purchasing, Engineering, Finance, and IT/Operational Technology in a solution-oriented manner to support plant and regional priorities.
• Support a culture where maintenance is viewed as a reliable partner to the plant, focused on safety, uptime, communication, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
• Collaborate with management to implement company policies and achieve operational objectives across North America.
• Promote a strong safety culture across all maintenance and engineering teams.
• Ensure maintenance work complies with company safety policies, lockout/tagout requirements, hazard communication requirements, PPE requirements, environmental requirements, engineering standards, internal quality standards, ISO requirements, and applicable regulations.
• Ensure plant teams participate in safety audits, incident investigations, hazard assessments, and corrective action follow-up as required.
• Ensure contractor work is properly scoped, scheduled, supervised, and documented in the CMMS as appropriate.
• Support purchasing activities related to maintenance parts, services, equipment, project materials, and spare parts specifications.
• Ensure plants maintain appropriate critical spare parts, maintenance inventory, and equipment records.
• Assist with regional maintenance budgets, repair spending, capital planning, and cost-control initiatives.
• Recommend investments that improve safety, reliability, productivity, customer delivery performance, asset lifecycle management, or long-term cost performance.

Qualifications and Experience Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Industrial Technology, Maintenance Management, or related field preferred; equivalent education and experience may be considered.
• Minimum of 7–10 years of progressive maintenance, reliability, engineering, or plant operations experience in a manufacturing or industrial environment preferred.
• Minimum of 5 years of supervisory, management, or multi-site leadership experience overseeing maintenance employees, technicians, plant engineers, skilled trades, supervisors, or other technical employees preferred.
• Experience leading or providing functional oversight to maintenance teams in production environments with responsibility for equipment uptime, preventive maintenance, troubleshooting, and reliability improvement.
• Experience managing or overseeing engineering projects, reliability projects, capital improvements, contractors, vendors, suppliers, equipment installations, commissioning, and validation activities.
• Experience with preventive maintenance, predictive maintenance, downtime reduction, condition-based monitoring, root cause analysis, and corrective action planning.
• Strong knowledge of mechanical, electrical, hydraulic, pneumatic, and industrial equipment systems.
• Experience reviewing drawings, technical documentation, equipment specifications, as-built drawings, and engineering standards preferred.
• Strong system, computer, data analysis, and reporting capabilities required.
• CMMS experience required; experience with UpKeep or similar system preferred.
• Experience reviewing and using SCADA information, equipment data, production data, dashboards, or other operational technology systems to support decisions preferred.
• Strong understanding of workplace safety practices, lockout/tagout, hazard communication, PPE requirements, contractor safety, quality standards, ISO requirements, and regulatory compliance.
• Domestic and International Travel up to 50%.
• Ability to work in and regularly visit manufacturing plant environments.
• Ability to walk production floors, access equipment areas, and respond to plant maintenance and reliability issues as needed.
• May require work outside normal business hours to support equipment breakdowns, projects, shutdowns, off-shift maintenance needs, urgent plant needs, or emergency situations.