Head of Engineering

Vittoria Food and Beverage; Sydney; On-site; AUD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Generous staff discounts

Iconic Australian brands

Fast-paced FMCG environment

Job summary

Vittoria Food & Beverage is seeking a Head of Engineering to lead the Silverwater site, oversee the engineering and maintenance team, and deliver reliable operations in a fast-paced FMCG environment.

This senior, hands-on role focuses on driving plant performance, safety, and capital projects, with strong leadership and a commercial mindset to support growth and continuous improvement.

Qualifications

• Significant leadership experience in FMCG or high-volume manufacturing.
• Proven ability to lead engineering or maintenance teams.
• Strong knowledge of manufacturing equipment, maintenance, and reliability.
• Track record delivering major capital projects from concept to commissioning.
• Solid understanding of automation, controls, and production infrastructure.
• Experience driving continuous improvement, reliability, and downtime reduction.
• Knowledge of WHS, compliance standards, and contractor management.
• Commercial acumen and ability to balance safety with production goals.

Responsibilities

• Lead the engineering and maintenance function across the manufacturing operations.
• Drive preventative and predictive maintenance to improve plant availability.
• Troubleshoot breakdowns and support repairs on the production floor.
• Develop and manage engineering budgets and capex plans.
• Improve plant performance, throughput, efficiency and OEE.
• Identify opportunities to improve automation, controls, and production infra.
• Collaborate with Production to resolve bottlenecks and enhance capability.
• Manage external engineers, contractors, equipment suppliers.
• Ensure engineering activities meet WHS, food safety, quality regs.
• Develop engineering capability through leadership and succession planning.

Skills

Leadership

FMCG experience

Maintenance management

Reliability engineering

Capital projects

Automation & controls

WHS compliance

Contractor management

Job description

Vittoria Food and Beverage – Silverwater NSW

We are a privately owned, family business competing against some of the biggest multinationals in the world. We are Australia’s No. 1 Pure Coffee Company*. Since 1947, we’ve been building brands into internationally recognised household names like Vittoria Coffee, Jarlsberg Cheese and Santa Vittoria mineral water. We are a fast-moving, innovative, market-leading business with a strong entrepreneurial culture. We only look at our competitors to ensure we can act differently.

The Role

We are looking for an experienced Head of Engineering to lead our engineering and maintenance team at our Silverwater manufacturing operations. This is a senior, hands-on role for an engineering leader who knows how to drive reliability, improve plant performance and deliver projects in a fast-paced manufacturing environment.

Reporting to the Head of Production, you will take ownership of the engineering and maintenance function, with responsibility for ensuring our production equipment, facilities and infrastructure operate safely, reliably and efficiently.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the engineering and maintenance function across our manufacturing operations.
• Drive preventative and predictive maintenance programs to improve plant availability and reduce unplanned downtime.
• Take a hands-on approach to engineering, working alongside the team to troubleshoot breakdowns, diagnose equipment issues and support practical repairs and solutions on the production floor.
• Develop and manage engineering and maintenance budgets and capital expenditure plans.
• Improve plant performance, throughput, efficiency and overall equipment effectiveness.
• Identify opportunities to improve automation, controls, utilities and production infrastructure.
• Partner with Production and Operations to resolve bottlenecks and improve manufacturing capability.
• Manage external engineers, contractors, equipment suppliers and technical partners.
• Ensure engineering activities meet WHS, food safety, quality and regulatory requirements.
• Develop engineering capability through strong leadership, coaching, accountability and succession planning.

About You

You are an experienced engineering leader who combines strong technical capability with commercial thinking and practical leadership. You will ideally bring:

• Significant engineering leadership experience within FMCG, food and beverage, manufacturing or a comparable high-volume production environment.
• Proven experience leading engineering or maintenance teams.
• Strong knowledge of manufacturing equipment, preventative maintenance and reliability.
• Demonstrated experience delivering significant capital projects from concept through to commissioning.
• Strong understanding of automation, controls, utilities and production infrastructure.
• Experience driving continuous improvement, equipment reliability and downtime reduction.
• Sound knowledge of WHS, engineering compliance and contractor management.

Why Join Vittoria?

This is an opportunity to take ownership of a critical function within an established Australian family-owned business and have a direct impact on the future capability of our manufacturing operations.

You will have the opportunity to:

• Generous staff discounts on products
• Work with iconic Australian brands in a fast-paced FMCG environment.

Vittoria Food & Beverage is committed to developing and retaining highly talented people. If you are a self-driven, enthusiastic individual.and relish the opportunity of working in a fast moving entrepreneurial business with a unique culture built upon strong values, innovative marketing with a strong results orientationthen we look forward to hearing from you