Director of Engineering

Position Summary

The Director of Engineering is responsible for ensuring that output and uptime performance meet the demands of the customer. The role is the head of the Engineering department — manufacturing and reliability engineering, maintenance, and facilities and utilities — and leads a department of approximately 60 employees across multiple shifts. The role is accountable for equipment availability across processing, filling, packaging, material handling, and supporting infrastructure, and for the safe and compliant condition of those assets.

The key performance metrics are OEE and output, downtime and PM compliance, operational risk, successful commercialization, and cost reduction. The Director builds and owns the department budget — capital, expenses, salary, headcount, and cost-reduction targets — sets the KPIs for the department and for each line, and manages, develops, and structures the team against them.

Responsibilities and Essential Duties

• Deliver the production uptime and output required to meet the customer schedule. Own equipment availability and OEE, make demonstrated rates and downtime visible daily, and drive the actions that close the gap to target.
• Eliminate the largest causes of downtime: own top-loss analysis, root cause, and permanent corrective action for line stoppages, repeat failures, and changeover losses, managing the department to MTTR, MTBF, and repeat work-order performance.
• Drive accountability for the preventive maintenance program — PM scheduling and completion, past-due PM reporting and disposition, spare-part and change-part control, and the monthly critical equipment review. Approve equipment criticality classifications.
• Ensure facilities and utility system uptime — HVAC, purified water, compressed air, boiler, chilled water, CIP, and containment systems — including the contingency plan when a utility failure threatens production through a robust team and program.
• Develop and execute equipment, utility, and facility qualification, change control, and decommissioning — review and approve protocols and reports or develop the team and process to do so.
• Own Continuous Improvement, investigating Engineering-related NOEs and developing CAPAs end to end for any company challenge: investigation, root cause, corrective action, and verified effectiveness.
• Own the Engineering safety program alongside the Safety Manager and Safety Committee — machine guarding, energy control (LOTOTO), hot work, guard-bypass permits, and contractor and construction controls.
• Build and manage the Engineering budget — capital, expense, salary, headcount, and cost-reduction targets — and justify capital requests with cost, payback, and risk.  Drive accountability in targets and costs.
• Structure and staff the Engineering team to the work: clear reporting lines, the right leader-to-technician ratio, shift coverage that matches the production schedule, and a hiring plan that keeps critical positions filled.
• Develop the team deliberately: defined skill levels and advancement criteria for mechanics and engineers, cross-training measured against the equipment list, training completion tracked, and a visible path from one level to the next so that people know how they progress.
• Manage performance through KPIs at the department, line, and individual level. Hold a regular review cadence, coach where the gap is capability, address it directly where the gap is effort, and document both.
• Support new product and line introductions with the Manufacturing Engineers, Project Services, and R&I — line trials, change parts, tooling, scale-up, and validation — to meet the on-time, in full (OTIF) requirements of the customer.
• Represent Engineering with customers and the executive team: present performance, root cause, and recovery plans, and identify the investments that raise OEE, reduce conversion cost, and support new business.
• Rank Engineering initiatives by impact on safety, OEE, and cost, and cascade the top priorities into department, line, and individual-level metrics to manage performance.
• Support other company priorities as assigned.

Technical Skills Required

• Hands-on knowledge of the equipment type used at BMSC — high-speed filling, packaging, and processing lines, plus utilities and facility systems — with a demonstrated ability to raise line output through speed, changeover, and reliability improvement.
• Manages through OKRs or KPIs: develops the department scorecard, makes line and shift performance visible daily, and drives accountability from the department down to the individual.
• Demonstrated continuous improvement at scale — Lean, root-cause analysis, error-proofing, and reliability/PM programs — with measurable results in OEE, downtime, labor efficiency, and cost.
• Budget capability: builds a department budget (capital, expense, salary, headcount) from the ground up, manages to it, and justifies capital with cost, payback, and risk.
• Leads through others.  Structures the department, sets clear expectations, grows leaders underneath, addresses performance issues directly, and restructures the team when it is not built for the work.
• Builds technical talent: skill-level definitions, training and cross-training programs, and career paths that develop and retain skilled trades and engineers in a competitive labor market.
• Working knowledge of cGMP, FDA, ISO, EPA, and OSHA requirements as they apply to equipment qualification, validation, change control, documentation, and process safety.
• Fluency with CMMS, production-monitoring and OEE systems, and reporting tools, using the data to direct the work rather than to report on it after the fact.
• Credible in front of customers and the executive team: presents performance, root cause, and recovery plans clearly, and commits only to actions the department can deliver.

Experience Required

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering or a related technical field, with 10+ years of progressive engineering, maintenance, or reliability experience in manufacturing — personal care, cosmetics, OTC, food, or comparable regulated consumer products preferred.
• Prior experience leading a team of engineers or maintenance department, having already directed a large team through managers and supervisors.
• Experience leading multi-level technical organizations of 30+ employees across multiple shifts, including managers, supervisors, skilled trades, and technicians
• Experience owning a department budget and capital plan, including headcount, expense, capital justification, and delivered cost reduction.
• Demonstrated record of improving uptime and OEE at plant scale, with results the candidate can quantify.
• Experience building and restructuring a technical team — leveling, hiring, performance management, cross-training, and career development of skilled trades and engineers, with a record of retaining them.

Physical Requirements

• Regularly sit, stand, and walk for extended periods to support office, manufacturing, facility, and project environments.
• Ability to climb, balance, bend, squat, kneel, turn, crouch, stoop, and access equipment or work areas as needed for operational oversight.
• Physically able to lift up to 25 pounds on a regular basis.
• Frequent exposure to manufacturing conditions, including varying temperatures, loud noise, heavy machinery, fumes, airborne particles, electrical systems, chemicals, and moving equipment.
• Prolonged use of computer screens and business systems required for reporting, project governance, documentation, and performance management.