Director of Maintenance
About The Position
Cox Farms, operating under the BrightFarms and Mucci brands, is a leader in controlled-environment agriculture, aiming to revolutionize fresh produce cultivation. The company utilizes advanced growing techniques with less space, no pesticides, and precise environmental control across its operations in Georgia, Texas, Illinois, Ohio, New Hampshire, and Ontario, Canada, supplying fresh produce to numerous retail stores. This role is crucial for unifying and enhancing the existing maintenance organization. The Director of Maintenance will establish a cohesive strategy, set unified standards, and create a functional leadership structure across all sites, while also developing missing elements such as systems, career paths, and capital planning.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in Mechanical, Electrical, Industrial, or Manufacturing Engineering, or equivalent experience.
- 10+ years of progressive maintenance leadership in manufacturing.
- Experience leading a maintenance function through a multi-site build-out, greenfield stand-up, or significant scale-up.
- Experience leading maintenance in 24/7 food manufacturing.
- Track record of owning capital project execution and reliability programs (RCM, TPM).
- Hands-on CMMS/EAM implementation experience.
- Strong controls/automation background (PLC, SCADA, or BMS systems).
- Proven ability to recruit, build, and lead a team from the ground up in a fast-growing environment.
Nice To Haves
- Controlled-environment agriculture or greenhouse experience strongly preferred.
Responsibilities
- Unify and elevate the maintenance function across a multi-site network, establishing a single strategy, set of standards, and organizational design.
- Own and drive a network-wide asset management strategy, including equipment lifecycle planning and long-term capital replacement roadmaps.
- Design and implement preventive, predictive, and reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) programs across the network.
- Recruit, develop, and lead a high-performing maintenance organization, including designing the organizational structure.
- Design and implement career ladders and technical training programs to build internal capability and growth paths for technicians.
- Oversee CMMS implementation and adoption network-wide, ensuring work order discipline, PM scheduling, and asset documentation.
- Develop, implement, and drive Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as downtime, maintenance cost, schedule compliance, and spares inventory.
- Ensure all maintenance activities comply with Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) and Food Safety/Quality (FSQ) standards.
- Lead emergency response for critical equipment failures across the network.
- Direct all maintenance operations, including mechanical, electrical, instrumentation, controls, facilities, and utilities, for systems such as HVAC, climate control, irrigation, lighting, water treatment, and pumps.
- Drive Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) and asset uptime, leading root cause analysis and corrective actions for major equipment failures.
- Champion Lean, Six Sigma, Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), and continuous improvement initiatives.
- Manage annual maintenance operating expenses (opex) and capital budgets.
- Partner with internal and external engineering teams on capital project development and execution.
- Build and standardize a network-wide spare parts and inventory strategy to ensure uptime while controlling costs.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Director
