Reliability Engineer

Unilever•Jonesboro, AR

About The Position

The Reliability Engineer is responsible for improving equipment reliability, eliminating chronic losses, and stabilizing production assets through engineering-led maintenance strategies. This role sits within the Maintenance Department serves as the technical owner of loss elimination, defining asset reliability strategies and standards to transition the plant from reactive to preventive and predictive maintenance. Working closely with Maintenance and Operations, this position ensures asset strategies and improvements permanently eliminate failure modes impacting Safety, Quality, Production, and Cost. The role focuses on defining and driving reliability strategy and is not responsible for day-to-day maintenance execution. You’ll be part of a team that believes in doing work that matters – for people and the planet. Because here, we don’t just hire for jobs. We invite you to be part of something bigger.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in engineering: Mechanical, Chemical, or equivalent
5+ years of related experience in FMCG, chemical, oil & gas, pharmaceutical or automotive industry
Strong understanding of maintenance and reliability fundamentals (breakdown analysis, failure modes, RCA, FMEA, bad-actor analysis)
Experience using data to drive decisions
Experience with preventive and predictive maintenance
Familiarity with CMMS systems
CAD experience (e.g., SolidWorks, AutoCAD)
Condition monitoring and predictive maintenance experience
Experience using digital tools or analytics

Nice To Haves

3D printing or rapid prototyping experience

Responsibilities

Identify and prioritize chronic losses and bad actor assets using downtime, cost, and defect data
Lead root cause analysis (RCA) and implement permanent solutions to eliminate repeat failures
Develop and maintain reliability strategies for critical equipment
Use data to validate improvements and track results
Drive prioritization of reliability efforts based on business impact (Safety, Quality, Cost, Delivery)
Ensure solutions are sustained through standards, PMs, and procedures
Define and optimize maintenance strategies (PM, PdM, run-to-failure) based on failure modes and asset criticality
Improve PM effectiveness through failure-mode-driven tasks
Drive continuous improvement of maintenance plans using CMMS data and feedback
Eliminate non-value-added PMs and improve maintenance efficiency
Ensure maintenance strategies prevent repeat failures
Develop SMPs and standards
Work directly on the plant floor to validate failures and root causes
Coach maintenance and operations teams in RCA and reliability thinking
Partner with Operations to reduce misuse and avoidable losses
Support implementation of practical, sustainable improvements
Support capital projects related to fixed equipment, process improvement, utilities, and facilities
Apply structured improvement methodologies (TPM/WCM, focused improvement)
Embed reliability improvements into daily operations
Collaborate across Engineering, Maintenance, Quality, and Operations
Maintain reliability data to support decision-making
Apply condition monitoring techniques (vibration, thermography, oil analysis)
Support development of predictive maintenance strategies
Use data and analytics to improve asset performance
Reduce downtime and improve asset reliability (MTBF / MTTR / BD%, PMs )
Eliminate chronic failures and bad actors
Improve effectiveness of maintenance strategies
Deliver sustained improvements through data
Increase capability of maintenance and operations teams