Assistant Manager - Engineering Operations

Stanford Medicine Children's Health•Palo Alto, CA

13h•$58 - $76•Onsite

About The Position

The Engineering Operations Assistant Manager is accountable for safe, reliable, compliant, and efficient Engineering and Maintenance operations during assigned shift periods. The role provides leadership oversight and directly supervises assigned Lead Maintenance Engineers and Maintenance Engineers, ensuring operational continuity across shifts and coordinating responses to facility, utility, equipment, safety, and service issues in a healthcare environment. The Assistant Manager oversees the department’s predictive and preventive maintenance program, including planning, job-plan quality, scheduling readiness and execution, backlog control, compliance, documentation, performance monitoring, and continuous improvement. The role works through Lead Maintenance Engineers and Maintenance Engineers and partners with facility systems engineers, specialty supervisors, the CMMS administrator, supply partners, and the Facilities Operations Manager to coordinate priorities, technical standards, resources, and escalations. The position establishes operational readiness through workforce capability, procedures, tools, materials, and performance controls; monitors service and cost results; and escalates decisions involving contracts, licensing, warranties, capacity, capital, and risk to the Operations Manager. It may assume delegated operational responsibilities for the Engineering and Maintenance Department in the Operations Manager’s absence or as specifically assigned.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in a work-related discipline or field from an accredited college or university.
Five years of progressively responsible and directly related work experience, including at least one year in a leadership, project management, or program specialist role.
Ability to communicate effectively orally and in writing with frontline staff, technical experts, hospital departments, senior leaders, and executive stakeholders.
Ability to analyze data, perform root cause analysis, develop recommendations, prepare comprehensive reports, and communicate findings effectively.
Ability to manage complex projects and resources involving people, cost, time, materials, vendors, and competing operational priorities.
Advanced knowledge of preventive and predictive maintenance program design, CMMS/EAM work management, job planning, backlog control, asset reliability, performance measurement, and continuous improvement.
Working knowledge of hospital building systems and utility operations, including mechanical/HVAC, electrical, fire alarm and low voltage, plumbing and medical gas, controls, finished trades, and related life-safety systems sufficient to coordinate operations and escalation.
Ability to plan and implement operating-model changes and cross-functional improvements while managing service continuity, competency, cost, quality, safety, and regulatory risk.
Knowledge of healthcare regulatory and accreditation requirements, safety codes, building and fire/life-safety requirements, outage controls, construction practices, infection-control coordination, and emergency management relevant to facilities operations.
Knowledge of cost estimating, contract administration, fiscal controls, personnel management, training design, and organizational change.
Ability to lead multi-shift operations, manage direct reports, establish accountability, resolve conflict, coach performance, and develop technical teams.
Ability to work a second-shift, later-shift, or flexible schedule, including planned overlap between second and third shifts, and respond to urgent operational needs as required.
No license or certification is required.

Responsibilities

Oversee the refinement, management, implementation, and sustained performance of the department’s predictive and preventive maintenance program within delegated scope.
Monitor preventive maintenance compliance, overdue work, backlog age, repeat failures, and labor utilization; coordinate emergency and corrective work; assess documentation, reliability, and performance; and implement countermeasures.
Maintain standards for asset criticality, maintenance strategies, frequencies, job plans, procedures, safety requirements, labor estimates, parts and materials, documentation, quality review, compliance evidence, performance review, and escalation.
Conduct preventive maintenance effectiveness reviews and root cause analyses; update job plans, frequencies, procedures, training, materials, and resource plans; and advance condition-based and predictive maintenance using available data.
Use the CMMS/EAM to manage work intake, prioritization, planning, assignment, status, labor and material documentation, regulatory evidence, backlog, completion quality, and performance reporting.
Oversee parts-room and maintenance inventory practices, including accuracy, organization, stocking, replenishment, excess or obsolete material review, and parts-issue documentation; coordinate materials integration with the CMMS administrator and relevant partners.
Build workforce capability through onboarding, qualification plans, cross-training, technical development, safety education, coaching, mentoring, succession planning, and documented competency validation.
Partner with Lead Maintenance Engineers on technical training and coaching while retaining accountability for training priorities, protected training time, competency expectations, follow-up, and formal personnel actions.
Ensure assigned work complies with hospital policies, safety requirements, building and fire/life-safety codes, infection-control requirements, environmental standards, regulatory requirements, labor agreements, and licensing or certification limitations.
Provide management oversight of Engineering and Maintenance operations during assigned schedules, ensuring continuity, effective escalation, and leadership visibility.
Supervise assigned Lead Maintenance Engineers and Maintenance Engineers, including staffing, scheduling, attendance, coaching, evaluations, development, corrective action, and personnel recommendations in accordance with policy and delegated authority.
Set shift priorities, deploy labor and resources, review workload and operational risk, and ensure safe, timely completion and documentation of preventive, corrective, emergency, regulatory, and customer-requested work.
Review work-order handoffs, repeat work, incomplete documentation, customer feedback, and failure history; conduct or sponsor root cause analyses and corrective actions.
Coordinate structured maintenance-lead handoffs and communicate unresolved risks, equipment status, outages, staffing concerns, and priority work to appropriate leaders.
Use Lead Maintenance Engineers for technical direction, triage, dispatch, complex troubleshooting, training, and shift communication while retaining managerial accountability and employee-relations authority.
Partner with specialty supervisors to validate technical content and regulatory requirements; direct shift execution through Lead Maintenance Engineers and hold Maintenance Engineers accountable for complete and timely work.
Maintain management standard work, shift huddles, visual controls, performance reviews, and escalation pathways; set expectations for attendance, teamwork, communication, customer service, work quality, productivity, documentation, safety, and professional conduct.
Coordinate with regulatory, clinical, security, environmental health and safety, infection prevention, construction, and other departments when work affects shared responsibilities or patient-care environments.
Provide input to operating and capital plans, including labor, overtime, tools, materials, training, replacement needs, vendor support, and project requirements; manage assigned resources within approved authority and budget.
Represent Engineering and Maintenance in assigned meetings and projects, serve as an operational liaison to hospital departments, and communicate decisions, risks, priorities, and outcomes.
Coordinate responses to facility emergencies, utility disruptions, equipment failures, and other operational events within delegated incident authority; activate escalation and communication protocols.
Coordinate construction, maintenance, and service outages, including Utility Shutdown Requests, impact review, countermeasures, staffing, communication, readiness, execution, and post-work restoration for assigned off-shift operations.
Ensure teams have the tools, materials, information, permits, access, and coordination needed to work safely and efficiently; forecast constraints and elevate resource needs.
Promote communication across shifts and trades and create development opportunities supporting internal progression from Maintenance Engineer to Lead and supervisory roles.
Lead assigned process-improvement work, including A3 or equivalent structured problem solving, standard-work development, workflow redesign, cross-functional change, communication, mitigation, and training.
Conduct facility and operational rounds; identify hazards, reliability concerns, work-quality deficiencies, and staff-support needs; direct immediate correction and escalate significant conditions.
Analyze operational, reliability, workforce, preventive maintenance, service, and insourcing metrics; develop approved benchmarks and corrective actions; and prepare reports and recommendations for the Operations Manager.
Assume delegated Engineering and Maintenance Department operational responsibilities in the Operations Manager’s absence or when assigned, without changing established reporting lines for supervisors, the Grounds Assistant Manager, or other manager-level roles.
Perform duties in accordance with hospital policies and procedures, Service Standards, and Code of Conduct, and abide by applicable Joint Commission requirements.