Maintenance Lead
Food Manufacturing | Industrial Maintenance | Leadership Opportunity
About the Opportunity
An established and growing food manufacturer is seeking an experienced Maintenance Lead to help drive equipment reliability, maximize production uptime, and provide day-to-day leadership for a skilled maintenance team. This is a hands-on leadership role ideal for someone who enjoys troubleshooting complex manufacturing equipment, mentoring technicians, and supporting continuous improvement initiatives in a fast-paced, FDA-regulated manufacturing environment.
If you're passionate about keeping production running efficiently while developing others and improving maintenance processes, we'd love to speak with you.
Position Summary
The Maintenance Lead provides technical leadership and daily direction to the maintenance department while remaining actively involved in troubleshooting, repairs, preventative maintenance, and equipment reliability. This role partners closely with Operations, Production, Engineering, Sanitation, and Quality teams to minimize downtime, improve equipment performance, and maintain a safe and compliant manufacturing operation.
This is a working lead position—not a desk job—and requires strong mechanical and electrical troubleshooting skills along with the ability to coach and develop maintenance technicians.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead, mentor, and support a team of maintenance technicians
- Prioritize and assign daily maintenance activities
- Troubleshoot and repair industrial manufacturing equipment
- Perform and oversee preventative and predictive maintenance programs
- Diagnose mechanical, electrical, pneumatic, hydraulic, and PLC-related equipment issues
- Support production by minimizing downtime and responding quickly to equipment failures
- Coordinate maintenance schedules with production leadership
- Assist with equipment installations, capital projects, machinery upgrades, and process improvements
- Train new maintenance employees and develop technical skills within the department
- Utilize CMMS software to document work orders, preventative maintenance, inventory, and repairs
- Monitor spare parts inventory and recommend replacement components
- Drive equipment reliability and Root Cause Analysis (RCA) initiatives
- Participate in Continuous Improvement and Lean Manufacturing initiatives
- Ensure compliance with FDA, USDA (where applicable), GMP, HACCP, OSHA, food safety, sanitation, and company safety standards
- Participate in on-call rotations and support occasional overtime or weekend production needs
- Promote a culture focused on safety, accountability, teamwork, and operational excellence
Qualifications
- High School Diploma or GED required
- Previous industrial maintenance experience in a manufacturing environment
- Prior Lead, Supervisor, or Team Lead experience
- Food manufacturing experience strongly preferred
- Experience maintaining high-speed production equipment
- Strong understanding of preventative and predictive maintenance programs
- Experience with CMMS systems
- Ability to read electrical schematics, mechanical drawings, and technical manuals
- Excellent troubleshooting and diagnostic abilities
- Strong communication and leadership skills
Preferred Technical Experience
Candidates with experience maintaining any of the following equipment are encouraged to apply:
- Conveyors
- Packaging equipment
- Processing equipment
- Pumps
- Motors
- Gearboxes
- Bearings
- Pneumatic systems
- Hydraulic systems
- Variable Frequency Drives (VFDs)
- PLC troubleshooting
- Sensors
- Compressors
- Boilers
- Refrigeration systems
- Steam systems
- Fillers
- Mixers
- Ovens
- Material handling equipment
- Electrical controls
Ideal Background
Experience in one or more of the following industries is highly preferred:
- Food Manufacturing
- Beverage Manufacturing
- Dairy
- Frozen Foods
- Bakery
- Meat Processing
- Ingredients
- Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG)
- Pharmaceutical Manufacturing
- Chemical Manufacturing
Pay: $38.25 - $50.00 per hour
Benefits:
- 401(k) matching
- Dental insurance
- Health insurance
- Life insurance
- Paid time off
- Professional development assistance
- Vision insurance
Work Location: In person
