Head of Reliability Engineering

Open Country Dairy Ltd; Auckland; On-site; NZD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Open Country Dairy Ltd. in New Zealand seeks a Head of Reliability Engineering to lead enterprise-wide reliability strategy across manufacturing sites, focusing on reducing downtime, extending asset life and improving plant performance.

You will quantify the commercial impact of reliability initiatives and ensure improvements translate into measurable operational value while guiding site-based maintenance and automation teams to lift reliability standards and predictive maintenance maturity.

Qualifications

• Significant reliability/maintenance leadership experience in capital-intensive manufacturing.
• Strong technical depth in RCM, FMEA, and condition monitoring.
• Ability to lead through influence across multi-site environments.

Responsibilities

• Lead enterprise reliability strategy across manufacturing sites.
• Drive downtime reduction and asset lifecycle value.
• Set reliability standards and governance for maintenance and automation teams.
• Lead root-cause analysis and failure-elimination initiatives.
• Support capital planning, renewal projects, and predictive maintenance.

Skills

RCM

FMEA

Criticality analysis

Condition monitoring

Root-cause analysis

Influence across sites

Education

Tertiary qualification in Mechanical or Reliability Engineering

Job description

• Senior enterprise-wide reliability leadership role across multi-site manufacturing operations.
• Drive downtime reduction, asset performance and long-term lifecycle value.
• Lead through influence across site-based maintenance and automation teams to lift reliability standards, capability and predictive maintenance initiatives.

About The Role

As Head of Reliability Engineering, you will lead reliability strategy, asset-health governance and maintenance standards across Open Country's manufacturing sites, with a focus on reducing downtime, extending asset life and improving plant performance.

You will also help quantify the commercial impact of reliability initiatives, ensuring improvements translate into measurable operational value.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the enterprise reliability strategy, including RCM, FMEA, criticality analysis and asset-health governance.
• Use asset condition and criticality data to drive maintenance priorities and set consistent maintenance and condition-monitoring standards across sites.
• Functionally guide Maintenance Managers and Automation Engineers through influence, setting reliability priorities, standards and quality expectations across sites.
• Build reliability and maintenance capability across the business, including succession planning and coaching for site-based teams.
• Lead root-cause analysis and failure-elimination initiatives to reduce downtime and repeat failures.
• Provide reliability input into capital planning, renewal projects, predictive maintenance and process-related failure work.
• Support strong health, safety, contractor and specialist vendor management across reliability and maintenance activities.

About You

You will be a credible reliability or maintenance engineering leader with sound judgement, strong influence and the ability to balance enterprise standards with practical site needs.

What You'll Bring

• Significant reliability or maintenance engineering experience, ideally in capital-intensive manufacturing, with the credibility to influence across sites.
• Strong technical depth across RCM, FMEA, criticality analysis, condition monitoring and root-cause analysis.
• Confidence leading through influence in multi-site or matrix environments.
• A practical, solutions-focused approach to improving asset performance and reducing downtime.
• A relevant tertiary qualification in Mechanical, Reliability, Asset Management or a related Engineering discipline.

Why join us?

This is a senior opportunity to shape reliability capability across a complex manufacturing network, influence long-term asset performance, and make a visible contribution to operational improvement.

Applicants must have the legal right to work in New Zealand.

Applications close 22 November 2026 or on appointment.