Maintenance Director

Job Details: Job Location: 7500 - Skokie, IL 60077, Position Type: Full Time, Salary Range: $155,000.00 - $180,000.00 Salary, Job Shift: First Shift, Position Overview

Key Responsibilities

Leadership & Organizational Accountability

• Provide strategic and operational leadership for the Maintenance organization, establishing a culture of accountability, ownership, urgency, and continuous improvement.
• Set clear expectations for maintenance leaders and team members while holding the organization accountable for performance, execution, and results.
• Lead, coach, develop, and retain a strong maintenance leadership team capable of effectively managing day-to-day operations while building long-term capability.
• Establish performance expectations and meaningful KPIs for maintenance leadership and teams, including equipment reliability, downtime, PM compliance, work order completion, response time, backlog, cost, and safety.
• Address performance issues directly and consistently while maintaining a culture of respect, transparency, and development.
• Build organizational capability through succession planning, talent development, technical training, and leadership development.
• Create an environment where Maintenance is viewed as a strategic business partner rather than solely a reactive service function.

Cross-Functional Influence

• Build strong, collaborative relationships with Operations, Quality, Safety, Engineering, Supply Chain, Finance, HR, and other functional leaders.
• Influence without relying solely on positional authority, creating alignment around maintenance priorities and organizational objectives.
• Partner closely with Operations leadership to improve equipment reliability, production efficiency, line performance, and overall plant productivity.
• Challenge the organization appropriately when maintenance, reliability, safety, or operational risks require attention.
• Serve as a trusted advisor to the site leadership team regarding equipment reliability, capital needs, facility requirements, risk, and long-term asset strategy.
• Translate technical maintenance issues into clear business implications and recommendations for senior leadership.
• Establish credibility across all levels of the organization and effectively communicate with hourly employees, front-line leaders, peers, and executive leadership.

Maintenance Strategy & Reliability

• Develop and execute a comprehensive maintenance and reliability strategy aligned with business growth and operational objectives.
• Drive the organization from a reactive maintenance culture toward proactive and predictive maintenance practices.
• Establish and continuously improve preventive and predictive maintenance programs.
• Improve equipment uptime, reliability, asset utilization, and overall equipment effectiveness.
• Analyze downtime, recurring failures, work orders, maintenance trends, and equipment performance to identify systemic opportunities.
• Lead root-cause analysis and corrective action efforts for chronic equipment and process failures.
• Develop asset management strategies that prioritize critical equipment and minimize operational risk.
• Ensure maintenance systems, processes, documentation, and standards are consistently executed across the organization.

Transformation & Continuous Improvement

• Lead Maintenance through a period of significant organizational transformation and growth.
• Challenge existing processes and ways of working while creating sustainable solutions rather than temporary fixes.
• Identify opportunities to improve maintenance structure, processes, technology, staffing, workflows, and organizational capability.
• Champion Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, reliability-centered maintenance, root-cause analysis, and other continuous improvement methodologies.
• Establish a culture where teams proactively identify problems, solve root causes, and continuously improve performance.
• Lead change effectively by clearly communicating the why, what, and expected outcome of organizational and operational changes.
• Build buy-in among leaders and employees while maintaining momentum and accountability throughout transformation initiatives.

Safety, Quality & Food Manufacturing Compliance

• Ensure maintenance activities are executed in accordance with all applicable food safety, regulatory, environmental, and workplace safety requirements.
• Partner with Quality and Food Safety leadership to maintain equipment and facility standards necessary to protect product safety and quality.
• Ensure maintenance teams follow appropriate lockout/tagout, electrical safety, machine guarding, confined space, and other applicable safety practices.
• Support compliance with applicable FDA, USDA, SQF, and other customer or regulatory requirements as applicable to the facility.
• Maintain a strong focus on employee safety and proactively address maintenance-related risks.
• Ensure documentation, records, inspections, and maintenance programs support audit readiness.

Capital Projects & Asset Investment

• Partner with Engineering, Operations, Finance, and senior leadership to identify and prioritize capital investments.
• Develop business cases and recommendations for equipment replacement, facility improvements, automation, and reliability investments.
• Provide maintenance leadership for capital projects, ensuring maintainability, reliability, safety, and lifecycle considerations are incorporated into project decisions.
• Evaluate the long-term return, risk, and operational impact of capital investments.
• Help establish a long-term asset strategy that supports organizational growth.

Budget & Cost Management

• Develop and manage the Maintenance department budget while balancing reliability, operational requirements, and cost discipline.
• Monitor labor, overtime, parts, contractor, and other maintenance-related expenditures.
• Identify opportunities to reduce maintenance costs without compromising safety, quality, reliability, or production performance.
• Establish appropriate controls for spare parts, inventory, contractors, and external service providers.
• Use data and business analysis to make informed resource and investment decisions.

Leadership Expectations

• Lead with accountability.
• Influence with authority within the Maintenance organization.
• Influence without authority across the broader organization.
• Make decisions with both urgency and sound business judgment.
• Hold leaders accountable while developing their capability.
• Build trust without avoiding difficult conversations.
• Challenge the status quo when it does not support the organization's goals.
• Create alignment rather than operating in functional silos.
• Communicate clearly and effectively from the production floor to the executive leadership team.
• Be visible, engaged, and accessible to employees and leaders.
• Balance short-term operational needs with long-term organizational strategy.
• Lead change with resilience, consistency, and transparency.

Qualifications: Required Qualifications

• 7+ years of progressive Maintenance Director or equivalent senior maintenance leadership experience within a manufacturing environment.
• Proven experience leading a maintenance organization supporting a manufacturing workforce of 500+ employees.
• Strong experience within food manufacturing, food processing, or a similarly regulated manufacturing environment.
• Demonstrated success leading maintenance organizations through growth, transformation, organizational change, or significant operational improvement.
• Proven ability to lead through accountability and establish clear performance expectations.
• Demonstrated ability to influence cross-functionally and build alignment without relying solely on positional authority.
• Strong understanding of preventive and predictive maintenance, reliability, root-cause analysis, and asset management.
• Experience managing departmental budgets, capital expenditures, contractors, and maintenance resources.
• Strong understanding of manufacturing safety requirements and food manufacturing regulatory expectations.
• Demonstrated experience developing leaders and building high-performing maintenance teams.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, communication, and decision-making skills.
• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Maintenance Management, Operations, Manufacturing, or a related field preferred.