Reliability & Maintenance Engineering Lead, Strategy & Execution

Neara; Vancouver; On-site; CAD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Sanctuary AI in Vancouver, BC is seeking a Reliability & Maintenance Engineering Lead, Strategy & Execution to own the regional RME function and define the maintenance strategy for a growing, geo-distributed fleet deployed on industrial hardware at customer sites. The role combines hands-on and strategic leadership, reporting to the Solutions and Customer Success Business Unit.

You will recruit, qualify, train, certify, and manage contractors and system integrators, build processes and

Qualifications

• Engineering degree (mechanical, electrical, mechatronics, or equivalent) is required.
• 5+ years in reliability or maintenance engineering for industrial automation, robotics, or capital equipment, with hands-on experience or leadership.
• Experience scaling maintenance/service functions, processes, partners, and metrics.
• Experience managing field execution through contractors, system integrators, or customer teams.

Responsibilities

• Build and own a regional RME team of internal and contractor staff.
• Define RME strategy, operating model, maintenance philosophy, service tiers, SLAs.
• Develop internal RME processes: PM schedules, fault diagnosis, escalation, spares policy, safety procedures.
• Produce training and documentation for customer RME teams, including certification.
• Run in-house platform monitoring team for non-air-gapped sites and escalate to Platform/ML Ops.
• Own a fleet management tool and drive KPIs like uptime, MTBF, MTTR, spares use.
• Define and run dashboard reporting for fleet health for leadership.
• Set spares strategy with supply chain and regional stocking.
• Close reliability feedback loop to drive design-for-reliability improvements.
• Own sustaining-cost model and budgeting for the service operation.

Skills

Reliability fundamentals

PM strategy

Failure analysis

RCA

MTBF/MTTR metrics

Cross-functional communicator

Documentation

Fleet management

Education

Engineering degree or equivalent

Tools

CMMS software

Job description

Reliability & Maintenance Engineering Lead, Strategy & Execution

Job type: Full Time Department: Applications Work type: On-Site

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Reliability & Maintenance Engineering Lead, Strategy & Execution

Vancouver, BC | On-site | Periodic customer-site travel | Full-time

Your New Role and Team

Sanctuary deploys its Embodied Intelligence Platform on industrial hardware into customer facilities. As deployed cells move from launch into steady-state operation, they need a reliability and maintenance function behind them. As we build out this expansion, we need someone driven and passionate to own both the strategy and its execution.

This is a strategic role for an person who has done hands-on work or led a maintenance team directly, and now wants to establish this capability with a growing start up from first principles. You will define how we keep a growing, geographically distributed fleet running, and then build the processes, tools, partners, and people to do it. Reporting to the Solutions and Customer Success Business Unit, you will work with Solutions, Deployment, Product Launch, Platform/ML Ops, and supply chain.

Our Success Criteria

• Build and own a regional, internal & contractor-based RME team. Recruit, qualify, train, certify, and performance-manage contractors and system integrators into a coherent field service network covering hardware, and platform at air-gapped sites




• Define the RME strategy and operating model , the maintenance philosophy, service tiers, SLAs, and the split between internal monitoring, regional contractors, system integrators, and customer-run teams




• Develop the internal RME process library: preventive maintenance schedules, fault diagnosis and escalation paths, spares policy, and maintenance safety procedures (LOTO and equivalents)




• Produce the training and documentation that enables customer RME teams to maintain our systems to standard, including certification where required




• Run the in-house platform monitoring team for non-air-gapped sites, with clear escalation into platform/ML Ops




• Own (not build) a fleet management tool, and drive the KPIs it surfaces , uptime/availability, MTBF, MTTR, downtime cause analysis, and spares consumption




• Define and run the dashboard reporting that makes fleet health visible to leadership, and own the initiatives that move those numbers




• Set the spares strategy in partnership with supply chain , critical-spares lists, regional stocking, and lead-time management against fleet need




• Close reliability feedback loop, feed failure and downtime data back into solutions and mechanical engineering to drive design-for-reliability and maintainability improvements




• Own the sustaining-cost model for the function , cost-per-cell maintenance accuracy and the budget for the service operation

Qualifications

• Engineering degree (mechanical, electrical, mechatronics etc.), or industry experience




• 5+ years in reliability or maintenance engineering for industrial automation, robotics, or capital equipment, bonus for time spent hands-on and time leading a team or function




• Experience building or participating in the scaling of a maintenance/service function, processes, partners, and metrics.




• Experience managing field execution through contractors, system integrators, customer RME teams or distributed service teams

Skills

• Fluent in reliability fundamentals, PM strategy, failure analysis, RCA, and the standard availability/MTBF/MTTR metric set




• Able to architect maintenance and training documentation and processes to be executed




• Comfortable owning a fleet management or CMMS-type tool and turning data into action




• Numerate, cost-aware and can defend a sustaining operations and spares strategy




• Strong cross-functional communicator across engineering, field partners, and customers

Traits

• Builds capability where none exists and is comfortable owning a domain end-to-end




• Pragmatic and data-driven , prioritizes the failures that actually drive downtime




• Comfortable working on a strategy and close enough to the floor to know what works




• Proactively pulls reliability requirements upstream into design than solving downstream




• Adaptable in a fast-paced environment where products and processes are still evolving

* This role involves travel to the United States and, occasionally, other international destinations. Candidates must be able to meet the applicable travel and entry requirements for the role.

Working at Sanctuary AI

Sanctuary AI is an equal opportunity employer; employment with Sanctuary AI is governed based on skills, competence, and qualifications and will not be influenced in any way by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability, or any other legally protected status. In 2023, Sanctuary AI moved into a state-of-the-art office facility and has been recognized by LinkedIn as a Top Startup company.

Compensation and Benefits

Sanctuary offers a market-leading compensation package that includes competitive salaries, equity stakes, and a full suite of benefits for permanent employees, encompassing health coverage, paid time off, cutting-edge work facilities, and worksite flexibility by role. Our commitment to fairness ensures that our total compensation consistently surpasses market standards.

About Sanctuary AI

Founded in 2018, Sanctuary builds humanoid robots and a novel control system for them that integrates symbolic logic and reasoning with data-driven robot foundation models. We use our robots to collect vision, audio, touch, and proprioception data from the perspective of the robot while they perform real-world work tasks. We use that data to train multimodal robot foundation models. Because our systems are vertically integrated, we can design, deploy, and refine at scale. Our mission is to create the world's first human-like intelligence platform for robots.