Director, Maintenance Engineering

Novolex; Lake Forest (IL); On-site; USD 180,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k) plan with company match

Medical, dental and vision insurance

Paid vacation and holidays

Tuition Reimbursement Program

Job summary

Novolex is seeking a Director of Maintenance to lead enterprise-wide strategies across its manufacturing network. You will drive preventive and predictive maintenance programs, optimize asset uptime, and guide maintenance governance to improve reliability and cost efficiency.

You will collaborate with Operations, Engineering, EH&S, Procurement, and Finance to align priorities, reduce unplanned downtime, and ensure safe, reliable production across multiple plants. Travel up to 50% is expected.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of progressive experience in maintenance leadership, reliability engineering, manufacturing operations, or related functions.
• 8+ years of leadership experience leading multi-site maintenance or similar teams.
• Proven track record in improving equipment reliability, uptime, and maintenance cost effectiveness.
• Experience implementing preventive/predictive maintenance, planning & scheduling, and maintenance governance.
• Strong knowledge of manufacturing equipment, plant utilities, spare parts management, and contractor management.
• Experience with maintenance management systems and performance reporting.

Responsibilities

• Champion a safety-first maintenance culture and ensure compliance with standards and regulatory requirements.
• Develop and lead enterprise maintenance strategy, preventive/predictive maintenance, and reliability improvements.
• Identify organizational needs, capability gaps, and governance requirements to execute maintenance strategy.
• Partner with plant leadership to improve uptime, reduce downtime, and enhance maintenance execution across sites.
• Drive standardization of maintenance systems, processes, and performance metrics.
• Build leadership capability through coaching, development, succession planning, and performance management.
• Provide executive escalation support for complex reliability and maintenance issues.
• Collaborate on capital initiatives from review to handoff, ensuring safety and operational readiness.
• Lead cross-functional maintenance projects with accountability for safety, schedule, budget, and quality.
• Develop OEM partnerships and service agreements for standardized maintenance programs and parts management.
• Maintain maintenance performance reporting on uptime, downtime, work orders, and contractor performance.
• Optimize maintenance spend, spare parts inventory, and vendor performance in collaboration with Procurement and Finance.

Skills

Maintenance leadership

Reliability engineering

Asset management

Strategic planning

Cross-functional collaboration

Budgeting

Project management

Vendor management

Education

Bachelor's degree in Engineering or related

Tools

CMMS (Maintenance software)

Reliability tools

Job description

Company Overview

Why Choose Us?

Novolex is a leading manufacturer of food, beverage, and specialty packaging that supports multiple industries including foodservice, restaurant delivery and carryout, food processing, grocery and retail, and industrial sectors. Novolex manufacturing and sourcing expertise spans a diverse range of substrates including resin, paper, molded fiber, aluminum and more. We provide customers a broad array of stock and customized solutions with 120 product categories, 250 brands and over 39,000 SKUs.

Our Sustainability Commitment

The Novolex sustainability vision is built upon three pillars: our products, our operations and our people. Each is critically important to our growth and future as a business. These pillars form the foundation of our company-wide commitment to sustainability, helping us achieve our ambitious goals through our wide-ranging initiatives.

Job Description

Position Summary

The Director, Maintenance provides enterprise leadership for maintenance strategy, reliability performance, asset management, and maintenance execution across Novolex manufacturing operations. This role is accountable for developing the enterprise maintenance strategy, identifying the organizational capabilities and resource needs required to execute, advancing a standardized maintenance operating model, improving equipment uptime and asset reliability, strengthening preventive and predictive maintenance practices, and building scalable maintenance capability across plants. The Director partners closely with Operations, Engineering, EH&S, Procurement, Finance, and business leadership to align maintenance priorities, improve operational performance, reduce unplanned downtime, and support safe, reliable, and cost-effective manufacturing execution.

Key Responsibilities

• Champion a safety-first maintenance culture and ensure compliance with company safety standards, maintenance procedures, equipment standards, and applicable regulatory requirements.
• Develop and lead the enterprise maintenance strategy, including preventive maintenance, predictive maintenance, reliability improvement, asset lifecycle management, spare parts strategy, maintenance performance governance, and implementation priorities.
• Assess and identify organizational needs required to execute the maintenance strategy, including capability gaps, resource requirements, role clarity, skills development, governance routines, and support model requirements.
• Partner with plant leadership and maintenance teams to improve equipment uptime, reduce unplanned downtime, increase mean time between failures, and improve maintenance execution discipline across manufacturing sites.
• Drive standardization of maintenance systems, processes, metrics, tools, work order practices, planning and scheduling routines, and reliability best practices across the manufacturing network.
• Build organizational capability through leadership development, coaching, technical capability building, succession planning, and performance management for maintenance leaders and teams.
• Provide executive-level escalation support for complex equipment reliability, maintenance execution, asset performance, spare parts, contractor, and operational continuity issues.
• Partner with OEM’s, Engineering, Capital Projects, Operations, and plant leadership to support equipment design reviews, maintainability, startup readiness, commissioning, stabilization, and operational handoff for capital initiatives.
• Lead cross-functional maintenance projects from business case and scope development through planning, execution, commissioning, operational handoff, and benefits realization, with accountability for safety, schedule, budget, quality, risk, and performance outcomes.
• Develop and manage strategic OEM partnerships and service agreements to establish standardized preventive and predictive maintenance programs, recommended service intervals, technical support models, critical spare parts requirements, training, and equipment performance expectations.
• Develop and maintain maintenance performance reporting, including key metrics related to uptime, downtime, work order completion, preventive maintenance compliance, maintenance cost, asset reliability, and contractor performance.
• Collaborate with Procurement and Finance to optimize maintenance spend, spare parts inventory, vendor performance, contractor utilization, and service agreements.
• Perform additional duties as assigned.

Qualifications

Essential

• 15+ years of progressive experience in maintenance leadership, reliability engineering, manufacturing operations, engineering, technical operations, or related manufacturing support functions.
• 8+ years of leadership experience leading multi-site maintenance, reliability, technical operations, or manufacturing support organizations.
• Demonstrated success improving equipment reliability, uptime, preventive maintenance compliance, maintenance execution, asset performance, and maintenance cost effectiveness.
• Experience implementing preventive maintenance, predictive maintenance, reliability-centered maintenance, planning and scheduling, work order management, and maintenance performance governance.
• Strong working knowledge of manufacturing equipment, plant utilities, maintenance systems, spare parts management, contractor management, and plant operations.
• Experience using maintenance management systems, reliability tools, documentation systems, and performance reporting processes.
• Demonstrated project management experience leading multi-site maintenance initiatives, OEM service programs, equipment installations, commissioning, and operational handoffs.
• Experience managing OEM and contractor relationships, preventive maintenance programs, service-level expectations, technical training, warranty administration, and vendor performance.
• Strong executive leadership, communication, stakeholder management, organizational agility, and cross-functional alignment capabilities.
• Proven ability to coach, mentor, develop, and hold accountable maintenance leaders and teams across a matrixed operating environment.
• Ability to influence and drive execution across manufacturing organizations with competing priorities and multiple stakeholder groups.

Preferred

• Experience supporting packaging, plastics, extrusion, thermoforming, injection molding, molded fiber, paper, or related manufacturing operations.
• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Maintenance Management, Industrial Technology, or related technical discipline preferred.

Travel: Up to 50%

A reasonable estimate of the current range is $180,000- $200,000 + bonus + benefits. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target salaries for the position across all US locations. Within the range, individual pay is determined by job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. At Novolex, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at the top of the range for their role and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case.

The benefits for this role include 401(k) plan with company match, comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance, flexible spending and health savings accounts, paid vacation, and sick days, paid parental leave, paid holidays and wellness program.

#INDSalaried

Company Benefits

What You'll Get From Us

Benefits

With safety as our top priority and a commitment to employee well-being an important focus, we offer comprehensive and competitive benefits that include medical, dental and vision insurance as well as a variety of other well-being resources focused on mental, physical and financial health. Specific benefits and well-being programs may vary depending on where you work.

Community Engagement

At Novolex, giving back to the local communities that support us is important. Our Focused Giving Program prioritizes support for organizations whose missions promote sustainability initiatives or address food and hunger needs. We also encourage facility level support of activities in the communities where our employees live and work.

Training and Development

We offer constant opportunities for advancement. From skills development to advanced education programs, training and development programs and courses are available through MyLearning. Programs include company and industry training curricula, support for formal education through the Tuition Reimbursement Program (Non-Union), and a Learning Management System that supports and enhances employee skills at all levels of the organization.

Novolex is committed to providing equal employment opportunity in all employment practices, including but not limited to selection, hiring, promotion, transfer, and compensation to all qualified applicants and employees without regard to age, race, color, national origin, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, handicap or disability, genetics, citizenship status, service member or veteran status, or any other category protected by federal, state, or local law. Any individual who, because of his or her disability, needs an accommodation in connection with an aspect of the Company's application process should contact [e-mail].

Formerly Pactiv Evergreen