Job Description:

Maintenance Manager

Location: Harlow, Essex
Job Type: Full-Time, Permanent

Maintenance Manager - Chemical Manufacturing Site

An exciting opportunity has arisen for an experienced Maintenance Manager to join a leading chemical manufacturing operation in Harlow. Reporting directly to the Site Responsible Engineer, you will play a critical role in ensuring the safe, efficient and cost-effective operation of the site through the leadership of a skilled maintenance team.

This position offers the opportunity to influence site reliability, asset integrity, engineering performance, and continuous improvement within a highly regulated industrial environment.

The Role

As Maintenance Manager, you will be responsible for leading all maintenance activities across the Harlow site, ensuring compliance with engineering standards, legal requirements, and business objectives.

You will support the development and implementation of the site's Asset Integrity and Reliability Strategy, driving equipment reliability, planned maintenance compliance, and engineering excellence through the effective use of SAP and maintenance best practices.

Managing a team of 14 direct reports, you will foster a strong safety culture whilst developing the capability and performance of the engineering function.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and develop the site's maintenance team to achieve safety, quality, reliability and cost objectives.
• Ensure engineering activities are delivered in compliance with all company, legal and regulatory requirements.
• Promote and maintain high standards of Health, Safety and Environmental performance throughout the engineering department.
• Develop and implement asset integrity and reliability strategies to maximise plant performance.
• Utilise SAP CMMS to effectively plan, schedule and control maintenance activity.
• Manage engineering KPIs, focusing on safety-critical equipment, reliability losses and maintenance effectiveness.
• Coordinate and manage internal and external maintenance resources.
• Lead the planning and execution of site shutdowns and major maintenance activities.
• Manage engineering stores, inventory levels and critical spare parts.
• Work closely with procurement teams to ensure effective cost management and purchasing controls.
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives across maintenance and engineering operations.
• Identify training and development requirements to enhance team capability and succession planning.

About You

To be successful in this role, you will have:

• Formal engineering qualification, ideally degree educated.
• A minimum of 3 years' experience leading engineering maintenance teams within a manufacturing or process environment.
• Strong maintenance planning and scheduling experience using a CMMS system, ideally SAP.
• Proven leadership skills with experience managing multidisciplinary maintenance teams.
• Strong technical and problem-solving abilities with a structured and methodical approach.
• Commercial awareness and experience managing maintenance budgets and external contractors.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.

Desirable Experience

• Chemical manufacturing experience.
• COMAH site experience.
• Asset Reliability and Integrity Management experience.
• Continuous improvement and performance management exposure.