Maintenance Manager

At Smurfit Westrock, we're looking for an experienced and people-focused Maintenance Manager to lead all engineering and maintenance activities across our Bristol site.

This is a key leadership role responsible for ensuring the safe, reliable, and cost-effective operation of production equipment and site infrastructure. You'll play a critical role in maximising asset availability, improving operational efficiency, reducing downtime, and supporting the site's manufacturing and commercial objectives.

Leading a team of Shift Engineers and an Engineering Assistant, you'll champion a culture of safety, continuous improvement, accountability, and technical excellence.

• Lead and promote a world-class safety culture across all engineering activities.
• Ensure compliance with all company, statutory, environmental, and health & safety requirements.
• Manage risk assessments, permit-to-work systems, contractor management processes, and engineering safety procedures.
• Drive safe working practices and ensure all maintenance work is completed to the highest standards.

• Develop and implement preventative and predictive maintenance programmes.
• Drive continuous improvements in equipment reliability, plant performance, and uptime.
• Lead root cause analysis activities to identify and eliminate recurring failures.
• Monitor asset performance and implement data-driven solutions to improve operational efficiency.
• Establish and monitor maintenance KPIs to measure effectiveness and support continuous improvement.
• Manage maintenance budgets and expenditure to achieve financial targets.
• Optimise spare parts management and supplier performance to balance cost, availability, and operational risk.
• Deliver engineering improvement projects focused on productivity, reliability, sustainability, and safety.
• Support capital investment planning and site engineering projects.

• Lead, motivate, coach, and develop the engineering team.
• Manage performance, succession planning, training, and capability development.
• Foster strong collaboration between Engineering, Production, Quality, and Supply Chain functions.
• Provide technical leadership and drive a culture of accountability and continuous learning.

• Develop maintenance schedules that minimise disruption and maximise equipment availability.
• Coordinate planned shutdowns and major maintenance activities.
• Ensure rapid and effective response to equipment breakdowns and operational issues.
• Support production teams in delivering safety, quality, delivery, and efficiency targets.
• Utilise maintenance management systems to drive planning, reporting, and performance improvements.

You'll be an experienced engineering leader with a proven track record of improving reliability, driving performance, and developing high-performing teams within a manufacturing environment.

• Significant experience in a Maintenance Manager, Engineering Manager, or senior engineering leadership role.
• Experience leading engineering teams within a fast-paced manufacturing environment.
• Strong knowledge of preventative and predictive maintenance methodologies.
• Demonstrated success in reducing downtime and improving equipment reliability.
• Experience managing maintenance budgets and engineering projects.
• Strong knowledge of health, safety, and environmental standards within manufacturing.

• Degree, HNC, HND, or equivalent qualification in Mechanical, Electrical, Manufacturing, or Engineering.
• Experience within packaging, paper, corrugated, FMCG, or other high-volume manufacturing environments.
• Knowledge of CMMS systems and reliability engineering tools.
• IOSH, NEBOSH, or other health and safety qualifications.