Director of Engineering

The Kraft Group & Affiliates; Worcester (MA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus Eligible

Job summary

The Kraft Group & Affiliates is seeking a Director of Engineering to lead strategic initiatives across engineering, maintenance, facilities, and reliability for multiple corrugated manufacturing plants. You will standardize practices, drive capital projects, and align resources to maximize uptime, safety, and cost efficiency.

Responsibilities include budgeting, KPI reporting, RCAs, and continuous improvement across the enterprise, with strong collaboration with plant leadership and the C-suite.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering or related technical field; Master’s degree preferred.
• 12+ years of progressive engineering and maintenance leadership experience in manufacturing.
• Experience in corrugated packaging or related high-volume manufacturing.
• Strong knowledge of reliability-centered maintenance, TPM, predictive maintenance, CMMS, and asset management.
• Experience leading multi-site engineering or maintenance organizations.
• Knowledge of capital project management and equipment lifecycle planning.
• Excellent leadership and cross-functional collaboration.
• Attention to detail and ability to multi-task.

Responsibilities

• Develop and execute an annual enterprise-wide engineering, maintenance, and reliability strategy with defined targets for uptime, maintenance cost, planned maintenance compliance, safety, and capital project execution.
• Develop, manage, and meet an annual maintenance and engineering budget including capital investment, maintenance and repair vendors, asset replacement, and internal labor cost.
• Standardize preventive, predictive, and reliability-centered maintenance programs across all facilities with defined targets and CMMS reporting.
• Act as a key member of the Operations leadership team providing counsel on maintenance, reliability, and engineering.
• Coordinate engineering resources and maintenance priorities to complete enterprise initiatives on schedule and within budget.
• Establish, monitor, and report monthly KPIs for equipment uptime, maintenance costs, PM compliance, asset reliability, MTBF, MTTR, and backlog.
• Provide executive oversight of RCAs for significant equipment failures and implement sustainable corrective actions.
• Partner with Operations to improve equipment performance, throughput, safety, and product quality.
• Oversee enterprise-wide capital planning for equipment modernization and engineering support for major projects.
• Champion a culture of continuous improvement across all engineering and maintenance functions.
• Ensure compliance with safety, environmental, and engineering standards; track audit and deficiency resolution.
• Build organizational capability through succession planning and training.
• Special projects as required.

Skills

Engineering leadership

Maintenance management

Cross-site coordination

Budget management

KPIs & analytics

Root cause analysis

Safety & compliance

Project management

Leadership communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in Engineering

Master’s degree preferred

Tools

CMMS

TPM

Asset management

Job description

Summary

The Director of Engineering provides strategic leadership for engineering, maintenance, facilities, and reliability initiatives across multiple corrugated manufacturing plants. This position develops a unified maintenance and asset reliability strategy, aligns engineering resources across facilities, and ensures maintenance efforts are coordinated to maximize equipment availability, safety, productivity, and cost effectiveness. The role partners closely with plant leadership to standardize best practices, prioritize capital improvements, and drive continuous improvement across the enterprise.

Bonus Eligible: Yes

Summary

The Director of Engineering provides strategic leadership for engineering, maintenance, facilities, and reliability initiatives across multiple corrugated manufacturing plants. This position develops a unified maintenance and asset reliability strategy, aligns engineering resources across facilities, and ensures maintenance efforts are coordinated to maximize equipment availability, safety, productivity, and cost effectiveness. The role partners closely with plant leadership to standardize best practices, prioritize capital improvements, and drive continuous improvement across the enterprise.

Duties And Responsibilities

• Develop and execute an annual enterprise-wide engineering, maintenance, and reliability strategy with defined targets for uptime, maintenance cost, planned maintenance compliance, safety, and capital project execution.
• Develop, manage, and meet an annual maintenance and engineering budget to include capital investment, maintenance and repair vendors, asset replacement, and internal labor cost. This will be measured in part through overall effect on revenue, EBITA, and year-over-year ROI on the business
• Standardize preventive, predictive, and reliability-centered maintenance programs across all facilities, including common preventative maintenance compliance targets, inspection standards, and CMMS reporting requirements.
• Act as a key member of the Operations leadership team providing counsel to the VP of Operations and C-Suite leaders on all aspects of maintenance, reliability, and engineering
• Coordinate engineering resources and maintenance priorities to complete approved enterprise initiatives on schedule, within budget, and according to defined operational requirements.
• Establish, monitor, and report monthly KPIs for equipment uptime, maintenance costs, PM compliance, asset reliability, MTBF, MTTR, and maintenance backlog to drive continuous improvement.
• Provide executive oversight of enterprise root cause analyses (RCAs) for significant equipment failures and implement sustainable corrective actions ensuring corrective actions are implemented, validated, and recurrence rates are reduced through documented follow-up.
• Partner with Operations to improve equipment performance, throughput, safety, and product quality using agreed-upon metrics such as downtime, OEE, scrap, safety incidents, and customer quality defects
• Oversee enterprise-wide capital planning for equipment modernization and engineering support for major projects, including capital roadmap from business case through design, vendor selection, installation, commissioning, startup, and post-project performance
• Champion a culture of continuous improvement across all engineering and maintenance functions by standardizing maintenance planning, CMMS governance, reliability processes, and performance management practices. Utilize enterprise maintenance and reliability metrics to identify opportunities, eliminate inefficiencies, reduce reactive maintenance, improve asset performance, and drive operational excellence across all manufacturing facilities.
• Ensure compliance with applicable safety, environmental, and engineering standards, measured by audit results, corrective-action closure rates, regulatory findings, incident trends, and timely resolution of identified deficiencies.
• Build organizational capability, measured by completion of annual succession plans, leadership development goals, technical training completion rates, bench-strength assessments, retention of key roles, and improvement against workforce capability gaps.
• Special projects and assignments as business dictates
• Responsible for the maintenance, creation and control of all personally identifiable information or any other information protected by any Confidentiality or Privacy Standards or Company Policies that you have access or knowledge of, including but not limited to any state or federal regulations including HIPAA

Supervisory Responsibilities

• Director of Facilities and Maintenance
• Assistant Maintenance Manager
• Maintenance Manager

Skills And Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering or related technical field required. Master’s degree in a related field preferred.
• 12+ years of progressive engineering and maintenance leadership experience in manufacturing required.
• Experience in corrugated packaging or related high-volume manufacturing required.
• Strong knowledge of reliability-centered maintenance, TPM, predictive maintenance, CMMS, and asset management required.
• Experience leading multi-site engineering or maintenance organizations required.
• Knowledge of capital project management and equipment lifecycle planning.
• Excellent leadership, communication, and cross-functional collaboration skills.
• Must have attention to detail and focused concentration.
• Must be able to learn new tasks and complete tasks independently.
• Must be able to make timely decisions in the context of the workflow.
• Must possess strong organizational skills, ability to multi-task and responsiveness.

PHYSICAL DEMANDS

• Regularly required to stand, walk, climb, kneel, crouch, and crawl during plant visits.
• Occasionally lift and/or move up to 50 pounds.
• Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

WORK ENVIRONMENT

• Frequent travel between multiple corrugated manufacturing facilities.
• Regular exposure to manufacturing environments with moving mechanical equipment, noise, dust, and varying temperatures.
• Hearing protection required in production areas.

CERTIFICATES, LICENSES, REGISTRATIONS

• Professional Engineer (PE) license preferred.
• Certified Maintenance & Reliability Professional (CMRP) preferred.
• Lean Six Sigma certification preferred.

Other Duties

Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities and activities may change at any time with or without notice.

This company is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, and other legally protected characteristics.