Maintenance Manager

Our client is seeking a highly capable, hands-on, execution-oriented Director of Technical Operations (Maintenance Management) to build and lead the companys maintenance, reliability, and equipment-performance capability across the business. This is a newly created role and a critical hire for the next chapter of the companies evolution. While several internal leaders have historically shared aspects of the technical workload, the growth, complexity, and bandwidth demands of the business now require a dedicated leader focused every day on line performance, equipment reliability, technician leadership, maintenance systems, and technical execution.

Over the last year and a half, the company has brought up seven new semi- to fully automated lines to support growth with new and existing customers. One recent example is the launch of four new confection packaging lines, representing approximately 18 million pounds of annual volume, with plans already underway to triple that business. The Director of Technical Operations will play a central role in keeping that growth engine running.

This is not an engineering-design role and not a desk-based maintenance job. Engineering for new capabilities, business-case development, and modular automation design currently reports directly to the CEO. The Director of Technical Operations will instead focus on understanding the equipment, learning it where necessary, leading the technical team, building better maintenance and reliability discipline, and ensuring that lines run consistently, safely, and effectively in a demanding co-pack environment.

The Director of Technical Operations is responsible for leading all maintenance, reliability, and equipment-performance activities across the company. This leader will strengthen uptime, improve PM and maintenance execution, build technical bench strength, support changeover-heavy operations, improve parts and vendor management, and help the company create a more structured and scalable technical-operations model.

The role sits at the intersection of line performance, technical troubleshooting, technician development, operating responsiveness, food-safety discipline, and growth enablement. It requires a technically grounded, highly visible leader who can combine hands-on credibility with practical systems thinking and a strong sense of urgency.

Primary Accountabilities

• Lead all maintenance and reliability activities across the companies multi-campus operation in a way that improves uptime, line readiness, technical responsiveness, and equipment performance.
• Serve as the senior technical escalation point for equipment issues, breakdowns, startup challenges, chronic downtime, and complex troubleshooting events, bringing real hands-on credibility to the work.
• Build stronger structure and discipline around preventive maintenance, maintenance scheduling, issue tracking, parts control, and equipment-support processes without becoming overly bureaucratic or desk-bound.
• Develop, lead, and strengthen the maintenance technician team, including deployment, coaching, accountability, capability building, and long-term bench development.
• Partner closely with operations and production supervisors to ensure technicians are aligned to line needs, recurring issues are surfaced and solved quickly, and technical priorities support business performance.
• Own parts strategy and ordering discipline, ensuring the right critical parts, vendor support, and technical resources are available to minimize downtime and support continuous operation.
• Support the successful ramp-up and ongoing operation of newly installed semi- and fully automated lines, including learning new equipment rapidly, training the team, and maintaining consistent performance once lines are in operation.
• Operate effectively across both campuses, maintaining strong physical presence and flexibility to move where needed based on operating priorities, line launches, and technical issues.
• Bring an appropriate level of maintenance-system and methodology rigor to the business, tailoring the structure to teh companys needs rather than imposing overly rigid large-company systems that do not fit the environment.
• Help teh company continue its progression from a successful entrepreneurial operator into a more professionally managed, technically scalable, lower-risk platform.

Ideal Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate is a highly credible, hands-on technical leader who understands how to keep packaging and food-related operations running in a fast-moving, high-changeover environment. This person should be comfortable getting onto the floor, sleeves rolled up, diagnosing issues, coaching technicians, and showing the team how work should be done when needed.

This is not a role for someone who wants to sit behind a desk or manage through reports alone. At the same time, we don't need need a pure wrench-turner with no systems orientation. The winning candidate will strike the right balance: organized enough to build better structure, disciplined enough to drive follow-through, and practical enough to remain deeply connected to the work.

Required Experience and Capabilities

Food manufacturing or food packaging experience

• Candidates must have experience in food packaging, food manufacturing, or a related food-oriented technical environment. This is a minimum bar because quality, cleaning, food-safety, and regulatory expectations shape how equipment is maintained and operated.

Hands-on technical troubleshooting depth

• Strong mechanical and technical problem-solving ability, with enough familiarity across electrical, pneumatic, automation, and line-function issues to lead troubleshooting and direct the team effectively. We're not seeking a NASA-level expert, but it does need a technically sound, well-rounded operator.

Packaging and line-environment breadth

• Experience across a variety of packaging or production-line environments is preferred over narrow specialization. The person should be comfortable learning unfamiliar equipment and quickly becoming effective in keeping it running.

High-changeover / dynamic operating fit

• Experience in environments where product changes, line changes, and production variability are normal. Candidates from static continuous-run environments who are accustomed to only minor tuning of stable lines are less likely to fit the model.

Maintenance leadership

• Proven ability to lead technicians, organize work, improve accountability, coach performance, and create greater structure without disconnecting from the realities of the floor.

Maintenance systems orientation

• Ability to bring appropriate rigor to PM scheduling, issue tracking, maintenance planning, and parts management, while tailoring the system to practical needs rather than overengineering it.

Multi-site flexibility

• Comfort operating across two campuses and multiple buildings, with the willingness to move between locations based on technical need and business priorities.

Hiring and technical talent development

• Ability to help attract, retain, and build technical talent in a market where strong maintenance professionals are scarce and valuable.

Nice-to-Haves

• Experience in contract packaging or co-pack operations is highly attractive because of the service intensity, variability, and need for adaptability.

Experience in confectionery, snacks, gummies, or adjacent food categories is helpful, though not mandatory.

• Experience supporting semi-automated and fully automated line additions in a growth environment is valuable.
• Experience in entrepreneurial, lower-middle-market, or founder-built businesses undergoing professionalization is attractive because it reduces acclimation risk.

Potential Derailers

• A desk-bound maintenance manager who lacks floor credibility and does not want to be hands-on.
• A narrowly specialized technician or engineer who cannot adapt across multiple equipment types and operating situations.
• A continuous-run manufacturing operator who struggles in a highly variable, changeover-heavy, customer-driven environment.
• A big-company-only leader who tries to impose overly rigid systems or expects resource levels that do not fit a practical lower-middle-market business.
• A candidate without meaningful food-environment exposure who underestimates the impact of quality and food-safety requirements on technical operations.
• A leader who lacks urgency, flexibility, or the willingness to move between campuses and respond directly to operating realities.