Maintenance & Reliability Manager
Job Title: Maintenance & Reliability Manager
Location: Cambridge, ON (In-Office)
Position Type: Full-time Regular
Vacancy Status: This position became vacant in September
AI Disclosure in Hiring: Artificial intelligence (AI) may be used to assist with certain aspects of the recruitment process, including the initial review and screening of applications. Final hiring decisions are made by Human Resources and hiring managers.
Role Summary
Reporting to the Plant Manager, the Maintenance & Reliability Manager will be responsible for leading the maintenance and reliability strategy for the production facility located on Beaverdale Road and the warehouse located on Pinebush Road. The role ensures that facilities, production equipment and maintenance systems support safe, compliant, reliable and efficient pharmaceutical operations.
This leader is accountable for building a proactive reliability culture that reduces equipment failures, improves asset performance, strengthens preventive and predictive maintenance capabilities, and maintains compliance with cGMP, company procedures and applicable regulatory requirements. As a member of the site leadership team, the Maintenance & Reliability Manager partners with Operations, Engineering, Quality, Validation, EHS and other functions to support current operations, future growth, automation, capital investment and operational excellence. The successful candidate is a change agent who challenges the status quo, develops people, uses data to drive decisions, and builds sustainable systems that improve performance over time.
Safety, Quality & Compliance
- Demonstrate visible leadership for Safety and Quality, ensuring maintenance activities are planned and executed without compromising employee safety, product quality, data integrity or GMP compliance.
- Build a maintenance culture in which unsafe conditions, quality risks and equipment abnormalities are proactively identified, escalated and corrected.
- Ensure maintenance work practices, contractors, permits, lockout/tagout and other applicable controls consistently meet site safety requirements.
- Partner with Quality to ensure maintenance-related deviations, investigations, CAPAs and change controls are technically robust, completed on time and address systemic root causes.
- Ensure maintenance and calibration activities are properly documented and performed in accordance with cGMPs, regulatory requirements, company standards and procedures.
Maintenance & Reliability Strategy
- Develop and execute a site maintenance and reliability strategy aligned with Operations, Quality, Safety and business objectives.
- Own the preventive, predictive and corrective maintenance programs, ensuring maintenance strategies are risk-based, effectively planned, completed on schedule and continuously improved based on equipment performance and failure history.
- Establish and monitor maintenance and reliability KPIs, including appropriate measures for equipment downtime, PM compliance, schedule compliance, emergency work, repeat failures and maintenance backlog.
- Drive the transition from reactive maintenance toward planned, preventive and predictive maintenance while improving equipment uptime and operational stability.
- Identify chronic equipment losses and lead structured root-cause problem solving to eliminate repeat failures and improve asset performance.
- Ensure critical equipment has appropriate maintenance strategies based on risk, failure modes, quality impact and business impact.
- Establish effective maintenance planning, scheduling, prioritization, backlog management and critical-spares practices.
Maintenance Systems, Calibration & Facilities
- Provide governance and leadership for the site calibration program, including use of BlueMountain, to ensure regulatory compliance, timely execution, appropriate escalation and continuous improvement of calibration performance.
- Ensure the accuracy and effectiveness of equipment master data, preventive maintenance plans and equipment history in MainBoss, and manage the equipment and facilities change-control process.
- Provide governance and technical oversight for facility systems, including the Siemens Building Management System and applicable fire protection and security infrastructure, coordinating qualified resources and service providers as required.
- Manage and periodically review maintenance and facility service contracts to ensure safety, compliance, service quality, performance and value.
- Plan and lead major maintenance shutdown activities with clear scope, risk controls, resource plans, schedules and post-shutdown review.
Transformation & Continuous Improvement
- Act as a change agent for the site, constructively challenging legacy maintenance practices and identifying better ways of working.
- Lead initiatives that increase maintenance effectiveness, equipment reliability, technician productivity and operational performance.
- Build a culture of structured problem solving, root-cause elimination, standard work and continuous improvement within the maintenance organization.
- Use maintenance data and performance trends to challenge assumptions, prioritize improvements and measure sustained results.
- Lead implementation and adoption of new maintenance processes, technologies, automation and digital tools where they create measurable value.
- Ensure improvements are standardized, documented, embedded in operating routines and sustained rather than dependent on individual knowledge.
People Leadership & Capability
- Provide leadership to ticketed millwrights, tradespeople, technical personnel and contractors to achieve Safety, Quality, Reliability and Productivity goals.
- Build a high-performing maintenance organization with clear accountabilities, standards, priorities and performance expectations.
- Coach and develop employees in technical capability, troubleshooting, structured problem solving and leadership.
- Develop competency matrices, training plans, cross-training and succession strategies for critical technical capabilities.
- Empower technicians to take ownership of equipment reliability and problem resolution while establishing effective daily and weekly management routines.
- Establish an apprenticeship program to pro-actively grow and develop talent within.
- Lead effectively in a unionized environment and maintain constructive labour relationships.
Capital Projects & Asset Lifecycle
- Partner with Engineering, Operations and Quality to develop the site asset-lifecycle and capital-investment strategy, identifying obsolescence, reliability, safety, compliance and capacity risks.
- Contribute to development and management of the Operations capital budget and ensure priorities support compliance, reliability and capacity-improvement objectives.
- Represent Maintenance throughout equipment specification, design review, procurement, installation, commissioning and qualification to ensure new assets are safe, compliant, maintainable and reliable.
- Establish maintenance readiness for new equipment and capital projects, including preventive maintenance strategies, spare parts, technical documentation, training, asset master data and handover requirements before routine operation.
Cross-Functional Leadership
- Work closely with Engineering, Validation, Quality, Operations and the Joint Health & Safety Committee to ensure technical issues and equipment risks are addressed to required standards.
- Establish an environment that promotes timely communication, effective escalation, fact-based decision making and strong cross-functional collaboration.
- Support technical aspects of quality investigations involving equipment or facility systems, determine root causes and drive associated corrective and preventive actions to completion.
- Perform other responsibilities consistent with the scope and leadership expectations of the role as business and site needs evolve.
Please note that this job description is not exhaustive, and the role holder may be required to undertake other relevant duties as assigned and is commensurate with the grading of the post. Activities may be subject to amendment over time as the role develops and/or priorities and requirements evolve.
Competencies Required for the Role
FOSTERING COLLABORATION/TEAMWORK- is the ability to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor; the ability and desire to work cooperatively with others on a team; as a team leader, the ability to demonstrate interest, skill, and success in getting groups to learn to work together. Builds partnerships for global performance. Respects others
PROCESS IMPROVEMENT – involves the business practice of identifying, analyzing, and improving existing processes to optimize performance.
RESULTS ORIENTATION – The ability to focus on the desired result of one’s own department’s work, setting challenging goals, focusing on the goals, and meeting or exceeding them.
CHANGE AGILITY/ADAPTABILITY – The ability to demonstrate support for innovation and for organizational changes needed to improve the organization’s effectiveness; initiating, sponsoring, and implementing organizational change. The ability to change or be changed in order to fit or work better on some situation or purpose, and embraces change. Strives for continuous improvement.
MASTERING COMPLEXITY/STRESS MANAGEMENT -The ability to keep functioning effectively when under pressure and maintain self-control in the face of hostility or provocation. Cuts through complexity to focus on core issues
Education and Experience for the role
- Minimum 5 years of progressive experience in production and packaging maintenance, including people, group or project leadership; pharmaceutical, food or other regulated manufacturing experience strongly preferred.
- Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering, Chemical/Process Engineering or a relevant technical discipline, or an...