Maintenance Manager

The Sterling Choice; Sheffield; On-site; GBP 65,000 - 75,000; Full time

Job summary

The Sterling Choice is seeking a maintenance-focused leader for a well-established food manufacturer in the UK, reporting to the Engineering Manager. You will take ownership of the maintenance team and drive reliability, OEE and continuous improvement across the site.

The role emphasises people development, coaching engineers, and delivering meaningful improvements in maintenance standards and processes. This is a high-impact leadership position with strong collaboration with Production.

Qualifications

• Food manufacturing experience
• Strong understanding of planned and preventative maintenance
• Experience improving reliability, OEE and equipment performance
• Ability to lead, coach and develop an engineering team
• Proactive, improvement-focused mindset

Responsibilities

• Lead, develop and motivate the maintenance team
• Coach engineers and create clear development plans
• Build a culture of ownership, accountability and continuous improvement
• Develop and implement planned and preventative maintenance strategies
• Improve equipment reliability and OEE
• Use maintenance and downtime data to identify improvement opportunities
• Reduce repeat failures and enhance maintenance effectiveness
• Collaborate with Production to improve equipment performance
• Support the site's significant investment programme
• Improve maintenance standards, systems and processes

Job description

A chance to build on what's already working, and take maintenance to the next level.

I'm working with a well-established food manufacturer that's going through a period of major investment and looking to strengthen its engineering function.

Reporting to the Engineering Manager, this is a maintenance-focused leadership role with a big emphasis on people, reliability and continuous improvement.

You'll take ownership of the maintenance team, developing your engineers while continuing to improve planned maintenance, equipment reliability and OEE. The foundations are there, this is about raising the bar even further.

What you'll be doing

• Leading, developing and motivating the maintenance team
• Coaching engineers and creating clear development plans
• Building a strong culture of ownership, accountability and continuous improvement
• Developing planned and preventative maintenance strategies
• Improving equipment reliability and OEE
• Using maintenance and downtime data to identify opportunities for improvement
• Reducing repeat failures and improving maintenance effectiveness
• Working closely with Production to improve equipment performance
• Supporting the site's significant investment programme
• Improving maintenance standards, systems and processes

What you'll bring

We're looking for someone who combines strong technical maintenance knowledge with genuine people leadership.

You'll need:

• Food manufacturing experience
• A strong understanding of planned and preventative maintenance
• Experience improving reliability, OEE and equipment performance
• The ability to lead, coach and develop an engineering team
• A proactive, improvement-focused mindset

Why this role?

This is about opportunity, not firefighting.

The business is established, secure and investing heavily - so you'll have the resources and

backing to make meaningful improvements.

You'll have the chance to put your own stamp on the maintenance function, develop a team and play a key role in improving reliability and performance across the site.

If you're a people-focused maintenance leader who enjoys making things better, developing engineers and seeing the results of your work on the shop floor, this could be a very good next move.