Maintenance Planner (Contract)

GKN Aerospace•Garden Grove, CA

24d•$84,048 - $105,059

About The Position

GKN Aerospace is hiring a Maintenance Planner on a contract basis for its Garden Grove Facilities Engineering, Repair & Maintenance organization. The role converts maintenance demand into planned, prioritized, scheduled, and executable work. Using Maintenance Connection as the planning system of record, the planner owns work-order triage, job planning, weekly scheduling, preventive-maintenance (PM) load leveling, backlog governance, and work-package readiness. The role works closely with the Maintenance CMMS Specialist, while retaining ownership of job plans, schedule development, execution readiness, backlog health, and coordination across maintenance, operations, stores, reliability, and facilities engineering. The planner reviews work orders, builds executable plans and PM work packages, and develops the weekly maintenance schedule with relevant teams. The position manages backlog review and prioritization, communicates schedule status and risks through Tier routines, and coordinates materials, contractor support, permits, access, and documentation before work is released. It also maintains planning information in Maintenance Connection, contributes planning inputs to KPIs, supports PM optimization and reliability reviews, and provides backup assistance to the CMMS Specialist for routine user guidance and data-quality tasks.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Technology, Engineering, Maintenance Management, Operations Management, Business, or a related field; equivalent maintenance planning experience may be considered.
At least 3 years of maintenance planning, scheduling, PM coordination, backlog management, or comparable maintenance operations experience.
Hands-on CMMS experience planning work, managing work orders, scheduling PMs, reviewing backlog, estimating labor and material needs, and supporting maintenance KPIs.
Working knowledge of PMs, corrective maintenance, work-order prioritization, job planning, schedule compliance, material readiness, and backlog governance.
Ability to coordinate effectively with technicians, supervisors, stores, buyers, reliability, facilities engineering, operations, contractors, and leadership.
U.S. Person status as required to support export compliance and ITAR-controlled aerospace and defense manufacturing operations.

Nice To Haves

Maintenance Connection experience, including work-order planning, PM scheduling, backlog review, reporting, and asset/work-history navigation.
Experience in aerospace, defense, cleanroom, chemical, utilities, CNC, autoclave, chamber, HVAC, or regulated manufacturing environments.
Experience building weekly schedules, facilitating scheduling routines, and tracking schedule adherence or break-in work.
Experience coordinating kitted parts, critical spares, vendors, shutdown windows, permits, drawings, and contractor readiness.
Experience with Excel, Power BI, or similar tools for backlog analysis, PM compliance, schedule metrics, and planning dashboards.

Responsibilities

Review incoming and open work orders in Maintenance Connection to clarify scope, priority, safety considerations, asset information, skills, labor, materials, drawings, vendor needs, and equipment-availability windows.
Convert approved non-emergency work into executable job plans and PM work packages, including material readiness, production access, permits, and closeout expectations.
Build and maintain the weekly maintenance schedule with maintenance supervisors, operations, reliability, stores, facilities engineering, and contractors.
Balance corrective work, PMs, safety and compliance work, available labor, shutdown windows, emergency capacity, and operations downtime.
Track schedule compliance, break-ins, missed PMs, and recovery actions.
Own backlog review routines, segmenting open work by priority, risk, age, resource need, and work type.
Confirm priorities with operations and maintenance leadership, escalate blocked work, and convert backlog into scheduled execution.
Communicate planning, scheduling, PM, and work-order support needs, including ownership, timing, constraints, and follow-up.
Participate in Tier routines and communicate planned-work status, schedule risks, PM recovery needs, break-ins, and KPI follow-up.
Coordinate with Stores, buyers, supervisors, facilities engineering, and service providers to confirm parts, kitting, repairables, vendor support, permits, access, and documentation before work is released.
Identify material, contractor, or access constraints early to reduce schedule changes and technician waiting time.
Maintain planning fields, job-plan details, schedule status, PM due dates, labor estimates, material needs, and backlog categories in Maintenance Connection.
Support asset and PM record buildout where needed for planning accuracy and PM coverage; the CMMS Specialist retains CMMS configuration, master-data governance, dashboards, and system administration ownership.
Provide planning and schedule inputs for maintenance KPIs.
Bring planning, schedule, backlog, and work-history insights to reliability and PM optimization reviews.
Back up the Maintenance CMMS Specialist with routine Maintenance Connection user guidance, work-order data corrections, reporting pulls, and basic data-quality support.