Maintenance & Utilities Lead

We are partnering with a leading pharmaceutical manufacturing organisation to appoint a Maintenance & Utilities Lead for a critical site-based role. This is a senior, hands-on engineering leadership position with full responsibility for maintenance, utilities, and reliability across a complex GMP-regulated environment.

Reporting to the Site Engineering Manager, the successful candidate will play a key role in ensuring asset reliability, maximising uptime, and supporting production delivery across multiple manufacturing modules. This is a broad and high-impact role requiring a technically credible leader who can operate at both strategic and operational levels - driving performance, leading teams, managing vendors, and fronting audits and regulatory interactions.

This organisation develops and manufactures innovative therapeutics for patients with rare health conditions, with a strong commitment to quality, science, and responsible operations.

Responsibilities

• Lead all maintenance and utilities activities across the site, ensuring high equipment reliability and uptime
• Own and optimise preventative and corrective maintenance programmes across process and utility systems
• Manage and develop a multidisciplinary team including technicians, engineers, and third-party vendors
• Oversee utility systems including HVAC, clean utilities (e.g. purified water, steam), and site services
• Drive reliability initiatives and continuous improvement programmes across engineering systems
• Act as SME during audits and inspections, supporting regulatory compliance (GMP, EHS, ISO, etc.)
• Manage engineering KPIs, performance metrics, and maintenance systems (e.g. CMMS)
• Lead troubleshooting, root cause analysis, and deviation investigations across equipment and utilities
• Own and manage the engineering maintenance budget
• Coordinate vendor activities and ensure service delivery standards are maintained
• Manage the on-call engineering structure and support out-of-hours escalation as required
• Collaborate cross-functionally with operations, quality, validation, and engineering teams
• Prepare and present technical reports, including audit readiness and system performance updates

Experience

• 8-10+ years' experience in a maintenance, utilities, or engineering leadership role within pharma, biotech, or API manufacturing
• Strong working knowledge of GMP environments, audits, and regulatory compliance
• Proven experience managing maintenance and utility systems in a manufacturing setting
• Demonstrated people leadership experience across technicians, engineers, and contractors
• Technically strong with experience across key systems such as HVAC, purified water, steam, and process utilities
• Experience with CMMS platforms (e.g. SAP, Maximo, Blue Mountain or similar)
• Familiarity with automation and control systems (e.g. BMS, process control platforms)
• Experience driving reliability, uptime, and continuous improvement initiatives (Lean, KPIs, structured problem solving)
• Strong communication skills with the ability to present to both technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Degree-qualified in engineering or a related technical discipline
• Attractive benefits package