Maintenance Manager

Verrus; Idaho; On-site; USD 130,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Verrus is seeking an experienced Maintenance Manager to lead the development, construction, commissioning, and long-term operation of a major open pit mining project in Idaho. The role covers maintenance for mobile equipment, fixed plant assets, processing infrastructure, and site services, with emphasis on safety, reliability, and cost control.

You will build maintenance systems, budgets, work management, and reliability programs from the ground up, collaborating with engineering, construction,

Qualifications

• Significant maintenance leadership experience within mining or heavy industry.
• Experience with mobile equipment and fixed plant maintenance.
• Experience supporting construction, commissioning, operational readiness, and startup.
• Strong knowledge of preventive and predictive maintenance and CMMS.
• Proven leadership with teams and contractors.
• Understanding of mining safety regulations.

Responsibilities

• Lead maintenance across mobile mining equipment and fixed plant assets.
• Develop preventive, predictive, and condition-based maintenance strategies.
• Manage shutdowns, component replacements, and lubrication programs.
• Implement work management and scheduling processes.
• Collaborate with operations to maximize availability.
• Establish maintenance reporting and KPIs.

Skills

Maintenance leadership

Site leadership

Budget management

Planning and scheduling

Reliability engineering

Team leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Mechanical Engineering degree

Electrical Engineering degree

Tools

CMMS

Microsoft Office

Job description

Reports To: General Manager / Senior Project Leadership

About the Opportunity

Our client is a well funded North American gold development company advancing a large scale oxide gold project through feasibility, permitting, construction readiness, commissioning, and ultimately operations.

The project is a technically straightforward open pit, run of mine, heap leach gold operation with a long anticipated mine life and significant mineral reserves. Planned infrastructure includes conventional open pit mining, crushing facilities, heap leach processing, ADR plant and refinery, supporting utilities, workshops, roads, pipelines, and associated site infrastructure.

As the project progresses toward construction, the company is building an experienced leadership team to deliver the next phase of development safely and efficiently.

Position Summary

Our client is seeking an experienced Maintenance Manager to support the successful development, construction, commissioning, and long term operation of a major open pit mining project.

The successful candidate will lead the development and implementation of the maintenance function across both the mobile fleet and fixed plant assets. Responsibilities will include mining equipment, ancillary fleet, crushing and conveying systems, process plant infrastructure, workshops, utilities, site services, and supporting facilities.

This individual will play a key leadership role in establishing maintenance systems, strategies, teams, budgets, work management processes, and reliability programs from the ground up while ensuring maintenance requirements are incorporated throughout engineering, construction, operational readiness, and steady state operations.

The role requires a practical, field focused leader capable of building a safe, reliable, and cost effective maintenance organisation that supports long term operational success.

Key Responsibilities

• Champion a safety first culture across all maintenance activities.
• Ensure compliance with applicable mining regulations and company standards.
• Build a high performing maintenance culture focused on accountability, reliability, planning, and continuous improvement.
• Provide visible leadership to employees, contractors, and vendors.
• Participate as a member of the site leadership team.
• Support investigations, root cause analysis, and corrective actions following maintenance related incidents.
• Support engineering, construction, operations, and procurement teams throughout project development.
• Review equipment layouts, maintenance access, workshops, tooling, spare parts strategy, and maintainability.
• Provide input into equipment selection, reliability, standardisation, and lifecycle planning.
• Support maintenance related capital and operating cost estimates.
• Participate in vendor technical evaluations.
• Assist with commissioning and operational readiness planning.

Construction & Operational Readiness

• Support construction sequencing, equipment preservation, commissioning, and handover activities.
• Develop maintenance readiness plans covering staffing, procedures, training, spare parts, tooling, contractors, and maintenance systems.
• Establish preventive maintenance programs, inspection routines, work instructions, and lockout procedures.
• Ensure maintenance resources are prepared for startup and ongoing operations.

Maintenance Management

• Lead maintenance activities across both mobile mining equipment and fixed plant assets.
• Develop preventive, predictive, and condition based maintenance strategies.
• Manage shutdown planning, component replacement, rebuild strategies, lubrication programs, and critical spares.
• Implement disciplined work management and scheduling processes.
• Partner closely with operations to maximise equipment availability and reliability.
• Monitor KPIs including availability, utilisation, MTBF, MTTR, schedule compliance, maintenance costs, and work quality.

Reliability & Asset Management

• Drive continuous improvement through reliability engineering and defect elimination.
• Conduct root cause investigations following significant equipment failures.
• Develop asset criticality rankings and risk based maintenance strategies.
• Establish maintenance reporting, dashboards, and performance metrics.
• Support implementation and optimisation of the site's CMMS.
• Improve equipment performance while reducing total lifecycle costs.

Budgeting & Business Planning

• Develop and manage maintenance operating and capital budgets.
• Prepare maintenance forecasts and major component replacement plans.
• Support procurement strategies for equipment, services, consumables, and contractors.
• Evaluate repair versus replacement decisions and lifecycle cost opportunities.

Leadership & People Management

• Build and lead the maintenance organisation through construction, commissioning, and operations.
• Recruit, coach, mentor, and develop supervisors, planners, tradespeople, reliability personnel, and contractors.
• Develop staffing plans, competency frameworks, and succession plans.
• Manage contractor performance and OEM relationships.
• Collaborate closely with operations, processing, engineering, supply chain, health and safety, environmental, and project teams.

Required Qualifications

• Significant maintenance leadership experience within mining or other heavy industrial operations.
• Strong experience across both mobile equipment and fixed plant maintenance.
• Experience supporting construction, commissioning, operational readiness, and startup activities.
• Practical understanding of open pit mining equipment and mineral processing infrastructure.
• Experience managing maintenance budgets, shutdowns, major components, and maintenance planning.
• Strong knowledge of preventive and predictive maintenance, reliability improvement, planning and scheduling, CMMS, and root cause analysis.
• Demonstrated leadership experience managing teams and contractors.
• Strong understanding of mining safety legislation and best practices.
• Proficient with Microsoft Office and maintenance management software.
• Valid driver's licence.

Preferred Qualifications

• Degree or technical qualification in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Reliability Engineering, Maintenance Management, or a related discipline.
• Experience within heap leach gold operations.
• Previous experience establishing maintenance functions for new mining operations.
• Experience implementing CMMS systems.
• Training in reliability centred maintenance, asset management, maintenance planning, or root cause analysis.
• Previous experience within North American surface mining operations.
• Strong safety leadership.
• Practical maintenance and asset management expertise.
• Excellent planning and execution skills.
• Ability to build systems and teams from the ground up.
• Strong communication and cross functional collaboration.
• Commercial awareness and cost management.
• Long term reliability mindset.
• High attention to detail.
• Strong problem solving capability.
• Comfortable working within a project transitioning into operations.
• The successful candidate will initially support project development, engineering, construction planning, and operational readiness before transitioning into a site based leadership role as the project enters construction, commissioning, and operations. The position will involve a combination of office, workshop, field, processing plant, and construction environments.