Senior Manager, Maintenance Operations
About The Position
The Senior Manager, Maintenance Operations is the senior technical and operational leader accountable for reliability strategy, regulatory compliance, and asset lifecycle management at a complex aluminum manufacturing operation. The facility includes a mill, furnaces, cast house operations, precision roll grind systems, utilities, and critical plant infrastructure. The role is responsible for delivering safe operations, product quality, and asset availability in a high-hazard, continuous-process environment. The position provides strategic leadership, technical governance, and cross-functional influence across operations, engineering, and maintenance. It leads the Maintenance organization and is accountable for its people, budget, technical direction, and execution. The role develops enterprise-level programs to protect and extend major assets, improve equipment utilization, support data-driven decisions, shape long-term capital planning, strengthen reliability culture, and reduce total lifecycle costs through advanced maintenance technologies and methods. The Senior Manager leads a workforce that includes front-line supervisors and union skilled trades employees; ensures safety and regulatory compliance; manages maintenance and capital budgets; and develops reliability, preventive, and predictive maintenance programs. The role also partners with internal functions and union leadership, drives plant transformation and continuous improvement, and establishes maintenance governance, standard operating procedures, and performance measures.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in engineering, business, or relevant work experience in lieu of a degree.
- 8+ years of progressively responsible leadership experience in heavy industrial maintenance in aluminum, steel, paper, chemical, or equivalent high-hazard continuous-process industries.
- 5+ years leading large, diverse teams, including unionized skilled trades, with demonstrated success building capability, improving performance, and driving transformation.
- Expertise in reliability engineering, predictive technologies, and capital asset planning.
- Ability to diagnose complex mechanical, electrical, hydraulic, and automation issues and lead cross-functional problem solving.
- Strong labor relations leadership and experience in unionized environments.
- High proficiency in SAP PM, CMMS systems, and data-driven maintenance planning tools.
- Exceptional communication and executive-level influence skills.
- Mastery of Lean, Six Sigma, TPM, and continuous improvement methodologies.
- Strong project management competency and proven ability to lead multidisciplinary teams through large-scale technical upgrades, shutdowns, and capital deployments.
- High ownership mindset and ability to perform under pressure, manage multiple priorities, and deliver results against operational targets.
- Local candidates only; relocation assistance is not available.
Nice To Haves
- Master’s degree in Business Administration or Engineering.
Responsibilities
- Provide leadership to a technical workforce, including 5+ front-line supervisors and 50 skilled union craft employees, and support succession planning, skill development, and accountability.
- Build a unified reliability organization through workforce planning, capability mapping, and standardized work systems.
- Integrate safety into maintenance activities and ensure compliance with OSHA, EPA, environmental permits, hazardous energy control, SQF, and GMP requirements.
- Lead risk assessments and implement engineering and administrative controls to reduce hazards.
- Manage a multi-million-dollar maintenance and capital budget, including labor strategy, overtime governance, contractor management, and inventory optimization.
- Develop long-range capital plans, asset replacement strategies, and financial justifications with Operations, Finance, and Engineering.
- Develop and deploy plant-wide Reliability Centered Maintenance and Condition-Based Monitoring strategies using technologies such as vibration analysis, thermography, ultrasonic testing, oil analysis, and PLC analytics.
- Own predictive maintenance roadmaps and KPIs to reduce unplanned downtime, increase asset life, and improve OEE.
- Integrate TPM, Work Execution Management principles, and digital maintenance systems to improve maintenance workflow performance.
- Partner with Safety, HR, Finance, Quality, Operations, Engineering, and Supply Chain to align priorities and resolve systemic issues.
- Engage with union leadership on labor relations, dispute resolution, and contractual guidelines.
- Develop KPI systems to monitor asset health, workforce productivity, schedule compliance, downtime drivers, and reliability performance.
- Lead plant transformation initiatives, structured problem-solving, Lean/TPM events, and improvement projects.
- Establish maintenance governance systems, standard operating procedures, and best-practice frameworks across shifts.
- Lead multidisciplinary teams through technical upgrades, shutdowns, and capital deployments.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
