Maintenance Manager

Steel Warehouse; Chattanooga (TN); On-site; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Steel Warehouse seeks a Maintenance Manager to lead maintenance across a high-volume steel processing facility. You will direct preventive, predictive, corrective, and emergency maintenance for production equipment, material-handling systems, utilities, and facility infrastructure.

Collaborate with Plant Management, Operations, Engineering, Safety, and Purchasing to reduce unplanned downtime and improve asset reliability.

Qualifications

• Significant maintenance leadership experience in heavy manufacturing.
• Experience building and managing preventive/predictive maintenance programs.
• Strong knowledge of mechanical, electrical, hydraulic, pneumatic, and control systems.
• Experience with CMMS software and multi-shift maintenance planning.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop maintenance technicians and teams.
• Ensure safety, device reliability, and timely maintenance execution.
• Coordinate maintenance coverage across shifts and support production needs.
• Drive continuous improvement and capital project support for reliability upgrades.
• Apply root-cause analysis and structured problem solving to chronic failures.
• Maintain accurate equipment records, maintenance history, and spare parts planning.
• Manage maintenance planning, scheduling, backlog, and work execution.
• Promote a strong safety culture and compliance with environmental/regulatory requirements.
• Collaborate with Operations, Engineering, Safety, and Purchasing to reduce downtime.

Skills

Maintenance leadership

Industrial maintenance

Troubleshooting

CMMS software

Preventive maintenance

Electrical systems

Education

Bachelor's degree in Engineering

Tools

Overhead cranes experience

CO2/fiber laser systems

Job description

The Maintenance Manager leads all maintenance functions within a high-volume steel processing facility, providing the leadership, technical direction, and strategic oversight required to maximize equipment reliability, employee safety, production availability, regulatory compliance, and cost-effective plant performance.

About the Role

The role directs and develops maintenance personnel and is accountable for preventive, predictive, corrective, and emergency maintenance across production equipment, material-handling systems, utilities, and facility infrastructure. Working closely with Plant Management, Operations, Engineering, Safety, Purchasing, and other functions, the Maintenance Manager reduces unplanned downtime, improves asset performance, strengthens maintenance discipline, controls maintenance cost, and supports continuous improvement and capital investment priorities.

Responsibilities

• Lead, supervise, coach, mentor, and develop maintenance technicians and other maintenance personnel.
• Establish clear expectations for safety, workmanship, productivity, accountability, response time, and equipment reliability.
• Coordinate maintenance coverage across multiple shifts and ensure timely support for production needs and equipment emergencies.
• Support hiring, onboarding, technical training, cross-training, performance development, and succession planning for maintenance employees.
• Build team capability through structured troubleshooting practices, standard work, and continuous skills development.
• Manage maintenance planning, scheduling, prioritization, backlog control, and work execution for preventive, predictive, corrective, and emergency maintenance.
• Coordinate planned maintenance with Operations to minimize production disruption and improve schedule compliance.
• Ensure maintenance work is properly scoped, documented, executed to established standards, and closed out in a timely manner.
• Maintain accurate equipment records, maintenance history, drawings, manuals, technical documentation, and repair information.
• Review recurring failures and implement permanent corrective actions that address root causes rather than repeated temporary repairs.
• Drive reliability, availability, maintainability, and lifecycle performance of steel processing and material-handling assets.
• Oversee installation, operation, relocation, modification, commissioning, maintenance, and repair of new and existing production equipment.
• Apply root cause analysis and structured problem-solving methods to significant, chronic, or repetitive equipment failures.
• Provide maintenance leadership and technical support for equipment including cut-to-length lines, levelers, industrial shears, coil-handling systems, overhead cranes and hoists, conveyors, hydraulic and pneumatic systems, motors, gearboxes, bearings, variable-frequency drives, PLC-controlled machinery, electrical distribution and control systems, CO2/fiber laser systems, compressors, and facility utilities.
• Develop, implement, and continuously improve preventive and predictive maintenance strategies based on equipment criticality, condition, OEM recommendations, failure history, and operational requirements.
• Use condition-monitoring technologies when appropriate, including vibration analysis, thermography, oil analysis, ultrasonic inspection, and related predictive tools.
• Monitor PM completion and effectiveness and revise maintenance tasks as equipment condition and operating requirements change.
• Ensure effective use of the Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) for assets, work orders, PM schedules, labor, parts usage, equipment history, and maintenance costs.
• Use CMMS data to identify trends, improve work-order quality, manage backlog, and support maintenance and capital planning decisions.
• Manage maintenance spare parts, critical spares, repairable components, and maintenance materials to balance equipment availability with inventory cost.
• Work with Purchasing and suppliers to improve parts availability, quality, cost, standardization, and lead times.
• Promote a strong safety culture and ensure maintenance activities comply with company safety policies and applicable environmental and regulatory requirements.
• Enforce Lockout/Tagout, electrical safety, machine guarding, hot-work, fall-protection, crane, and other applicable safe work practices.
• Participate in incident investigations and implement corrective actions when maintenance-related hazards or failures are identified.
• Lead projects that improve equipment reliability, efficiency, productivity, safety, quality, and operating cost performance.
• Support Lean Manufacturing, Kaizen, 5S, and other continuous improvement initiatives.
• Partner with Operations and Engineering to eliminate chronic equipment losses, bottlenecks, and sources of unplanned downtime.
• Work with the Plant Manager and Engineering to identify, develop, and justify capital expenditures for equipment replacement, modernization, capacity, reliability, and safety improvements.
• Participate in equipment specification, vendor selection, installation, commissioning, startup, documentation, spare-parts planning, and training.
• Unplanned downtime
• PM compliance
• Schedule compliance
• Planned vs. reactive maintenance
• MTBF
• MTTR
• Maintenance cost
• Work-order backlog
• Spare-parts performance
• Maintenance labor effectiveness

Qualifications

• Significant maintenance experience in industrial manufacturing, steel processing, metal fabrication, or a comparable heavy manufacturing environment.
• Previous maintenance leadership, supervisory, or management experience with responsibility for people, work execution, and equipment reliability.
• Strong knowledge of mechanical, electrical, hydraulic, pneumatic, and industrial control systems.
• Demonstrated ability to troubleshoot complex industrial equipment and coordinate effective repairs under production conditions.
• Experience working with 24 VDC, 120 VAC, and 480 VAC industrial electrical systems.
• Working knowledge of PLC-controlled equipment, motors, variable-frequency drives, sensors, and integrated drive/control systems.
• Experience developing and managing preventive and predictive maintenance programs.
• Experience with CMMS software and maintenance work-order processes in a multi-shift manufacturing environment.
• Strong computer, planning, organizational, communication, leadership, and problem-solving skills.

Preferred Skills

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Industrial Technology, Maintenance Management, or a related technical field; equivalent manufacturing maintenance and management experience may be considered.
• Facilities or plant engineering experience.
• Experience with overhead cranes, cut-to-length lines, slitters, levelers, industrial shears, coil-processing equipment, or CO2/fiber laser systems.
• Experience with predictive maintenance technologies, Lean Manufacturing, Kaizen, 5S, root