Engineering Area Lead

PepsiCo Deutschland GmbH; Cupar; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 55,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading global snacks and beverages company in Cupar is seeking an Engineering Area Lead to enhance maintenance planning and support engineering teams. The ideal candidate should have a minimum HNC qualification, experience in an FMCG setting, coaching skills, and effective communication abilities. This role offers competitive salary, bonuses, and comprehensive benefits, with an emphasis on personal development and inclusivity.

Benefits

Competitive salary

Bonus and car allowance

Flexible working

Wellbeing and career growth programs

Qualifications

• Experience from an FMCG or similar production/manufacturing environment.
• Technical credibility with the people doing the work.
• Commitment to self-development.

Responsibilities

• Implement and continuously improve maintenance planning and scheduling.
• Provide engineering expertise on site to drive improvements.
• Coach line teams to improve technical ability.

Skills

Time served technician

Coaching skills

Effective communication

Flexibility

Education

HNC qualification in electrical or mechanical discipline

Job description

Overview

At PepsiCo UK, we’re proud to make some of the nation’s favourite snacks and drinks—like Walkers, Quaker, Doritos, Pipers, and Monster Munch. With sites across the UK, including our Quaker mill in Cupar and Doritos factory in Coventry, we’re also home to one of the world’s largest crisp factories in Leicester. At the end of 2025 we will move our UK office to a vibrant new Reading town centre location, just minutes from Reading train station.

Why Join Us?

We offer a competitive salary, bonus, car allowance, flexible working, and a wide range of benefits—from critical illness cover and discounted gym memberships to enhanced parental leave and electric car schemes. Our commitment to wellbeing and career growth makes us a Top Employer for 14 years running.

You will be acting as the link between Operations and Engineering Support Teams, providing technical support and feedback on all engineering activities. Liaising with the senior reliability manager, shift operations managers, and process improvement engineers to coordinate area and line priorities, and communicating during planned and unplanned shutdowns.

Responsibilities

• The role of the Engineering Area Lead is to implement and/or to maintain and continuously improve the maintenance planning and scheduling and breakdown elimination system for their area, to coach line teams to improve technical ability, and to provide a continuity link to other Maintenance systems.
• Provide strong engineering expertise (hands on where required) on site to drive improvements in maintenance KPIs and sustain shift performance.
• Supporting shift engineering resource to ensure they are working proactively on the key requirements to eliminate safety, quality and performance issues.
• Provide coaching and feedback to improve maintenance interventions including speed of intervention, quality of completion and effectiveness of the interventions.
• Continually monitoring equipment failure modes and breakdowns and feedback to senior reliability manager and maintenance planners to ensure planned maintenance evolves to eliminate maintenance losses.
• Work collaboratively with the senior reliability manager and maintenance planners on regularly reviewing and updating maintenance tasks to ensure they are ‘fit for purpose’ and support the necessary reliability of the plant.
• Owning, developing, and tracking improvement theme action plans.
• Collaborate closely with Maintenance planners Ensuring that the work order backlog is current and sorted and managing how best to maximise and production gaps to complete corrective wo.
• Challenging shift engineers, asset care teams/ days-based technicians and FLEs around maintenance KPIs i.e. completion rate, quality of execution, SAP accuracy and MTBF.
• Provide engineering maintenance expertise on shift and ownership of site maintenance shutdowns.
• Highlight skills and capability gaps within the Shift tech population and work with senior reliability manager to address.
• Strengthen the engineering technical pool for future needs of the business.
• Lead and support improvements through effective use of the root case analysis techniques and the change management process. Target is to eliminate repeat and catastrophic failures at site.
• Support the ongoing update of the shift Technicians/ FLE’S training needs analysis to ensure the ongoing development of their maintenance skill

Qualifications

• Time served technician with a minimum HNC qualification in either an electrical or mechanical discipline.
• Experience from an FMCG or similar production/manufacturing environment.
• Coaching skills.
• Have on-the-floor technical credibility with the people doing the work.
• Have effective communication skills, including the ability to be an active listener, and the ability to both positively confront and be assertive, when necessary.
• Be personally committed to the self-development required of the role.
• Have a positive mindset to drive forward the maintenance requirements for this area.
• Possess a flexible mindset, e.g., a willingness to flow with the work to deliver the line key performance indicators (KPIs).

A Space to be You

We celebrate individuality and are committed to building an inclusive workplace. Our Employee Resource Groups help embed inclusion into our culture, ensuring everyone feels valued and heard.

Equal Opportunities

We’re an equal opportunity employer, committed to the Equality Act 2010. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and will provide any necessary adjustments to support you through the recruitment process.

About PepsiCo

PepsiCo products are enjoyed by consumers more than one billion times a day in more than 200 countries and territories around the world. PepsiCo generated nearly $92 billion in net revenue in 2024, driven by a complementary beverage and convenient foods portfolio that includes Lay’s, Doritos, Cheetos, Gatorade, Pepsi-Cola, Mountain Dew, Quaker, and SodaStream. PepsiCo’s product portfolio includes a wide range of enjoyable foods and beverages, including many iconic brands that generate more than $1 billion each in estimated annual retail sales.

Guiding PepsiCo is our vision to Be the Global Leader in Beverages and Convenient Foods by Winning with pep+ (PepsiCo Positive). pep+ is our strategic end-to-end transformation that puts sustainability and human capital at the centre of how we will create value and growth by operating within planetary boundaries and inspiring positive change for planet and people. For more information, visit www.pepsico.com, and follow on X (Twitter), Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn @PepsiCo.