Senior Maintenance & Engineering Manager - Aylesbury

Arla Foods; Aylesbury; On-site; GBP 80,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive base salary

26 days’ holiday

Annual pay review

Variable pay bonus scheme

Private health cover

Employer pension matched up to 6%

Life assurance cover

Flexible benefits: buy extra leave, iD

Job summary

Arla Foods at the Aylesbury Dairy is seeking a high-impact engineering leader to guide the automated production and maintenance strategy. You will shape reliability, lead a team of around 50 engineers, and partner with site leadership to deliver strategic initiatives.

You will champion APS-driven culture, continuous improvement, and proactive maintenance, ensuring world-class performance across the site. This role offers strong growth, competitive benefits, and a key position in an iconic dairy

Qualifications

• Experience leading large engineering teams (c.50 engineers) in automated manufacturing.
• Proven ability to drive maintenance transformations and reliability improvements.
• Familiarity with TPM/RCM/FMEA/5S/Kaizen methodologies and APS at scale.

Responsibilities

• Lead the Engineering team (c.50) across reactive, preventative and predictive maintenance activities.
• Drive the site's maintenance transformation agenda and APS-based culture.
• Develop people and nurture a high-performance engineering culture.
• Play a key role in delivery of site-wide strategic initiatives with the Site Leadership Team.
• Oversee Continuous Improvement and asset reliability initiatives, including CAPEX project delivery.

Skills

Leadership

Maintenance management

APS knowledge

TPM

RCM

FMEA

5S

Kaizen

Team coaching

Job description

Are you ready to lead a high-performing engineering function at one of Arla's flagship UK dairy sites? Based at our state-of-the-art Aylesbury Dairy, this is an opportunity to shape strategy, drive cultural transformation, and deliver engineering excellence within a highly automated manufacturing environment. Processing 1 billion litres of milk annually, the site is one of Europe's largest dairies, featuring advanced technologies including Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs), a cold store larger than 1.5 Wembley football pitches, and has been showcased on BBC's Inside the Factory and Channel 4's Food Unwrapped.

How You Will Make An Impact

In this role, you will lead the Engineering Teams at Aylesbury Dairy, ensuring operational excellence across all maintenance activities while driving strategic initiatives as part of the Site Leadership Team. Arla is on an exciting maintenance transformation journey, with APS (Arla Performance System) at the heart of creating a world-class reliability and maintenance culture. We are looking for a leader with a genuine passion for maintenance excellence who can inspire teams and drive sustainable change.

Key Responsibilities Include

• Leading the Engineering team (c.50 colleagues) across reactive, preventative and predictive maintenance activities
• Driving the site's maintenance transformation agenda, embedding APS principles and developing a world-class reliability-focused culture
• Driving people development and fostering a high-performance engineering culture, inspiring a passion for maintenance excellence across the team
• Playing a key role in the delivery of site-wide strategic initiatives as part of the Site Leadership Team
• Leading Continuous Improvement and asset reliability initiatives using TPM, RCM, FMEA, 5S and Kaizen methodologies, while overseeing site maintenance performance and CAPEX project delivery

What Will Make You Successful

To succeed in this role, you will bring strong technical expertise, proven leadership capability and a passion for creating positive change. You will have a robust understanding of engineering within an automated, fast moving manufacturing environment, along with proven experience delivering Continuous Improvement initiatives using TPM methodology.

You will also demonstrate strong leadership capability with experience managing teams of around 50 engineers, as well as experience leading culture led change and driving autonomous and preventative maintenance. A collaborative mindset is essential, with the ability to unite operations and engineering as one team.

What do we offer?

We’re committed to your growth and development, offering internal and external training opportunities.

• Competitive base salary
• 26 days’ holiday
• annual pay review
• variable pay bonus scheme
• private Bupa health cover
• employer pension matched up to 6% (12% total contributory)
• four times annual salary life assurance cover
• flexible benefits including the option to buy up to five days’ annual leave and retailer discounts
• strong career development.

At Aylesbury, you’ll join a team proud of its high job satisfaction with plenty of challenges and support to help you succeed.

For additional information, please contact Chris Wakefield in the Talent team at [e-mail]

Shape the Future of Dairy

Arla is a global leader in the dairy industry, committed to enabling good food choices that make life better, providing people with nourishment, while taking care at every step to ensure Arla is a choice they can feel good about. If you are looking to shape the future with an ambitious global cooperative that truly cares about your growth, where everyone feels valued and empowered, and collaboration is the core of culture, Arla is a choice you can feel good about.

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