Director of Maintenance & Reliability

Position Overview:
The Director of Maintenance & Reliability leads and continuously improves asset reliability across all company facilities. They're also responsible for developing and executing a unified reliability strategy that drives safety, uptime, and operational excellence in a high-risk, compliance-intensive industrial environment. This role builds upon established frameworks, processes, and systems to drive a proactive maintenance culture, while fostering continuous improvement and reliability excellence across the organization. The position also leads an engineering steering process with operational stakeholders and provides regular progress updates to executive leadership. This role reports to the Vice President of Operational Excellence.

Responsibilities:

• Strategic Leadership & Framework Development




• Design and implement a robust maintenance and reliability framework aligned with organizational goals.
• Establish standardized processes, systems, and governance for preventive, predictive, and reliability-centered maintenance (RCM).
• Develop and maintain KPIs and metrics to measure performance, reliability, and cost-effectiveness.




• One Gopher Culture & Capability Building




• Champion a reliability-focused culture across all levels of the organization.
• Serve as a One Gopher voice by promoting collaboration and resource sharing across all sites.
• Ensure talent mobility and leverage individual strengths to build a unified, high-performing team.
• Drive cross-site alignment on key processes such as shutdown planning and execution, maintenance practices, reliability strategies, and critical spare inventory management.
• Lead training and development initiatives to enhance technical skills and promote ownership of reliability principles.
• Drive engagement and accountability within maintenance teams and cross-functional stakeholders.




• Systems & Process Optimization




• Oversee implementation and optimization of CMMS/EAM systems for work management, asset tracking, and data analytics.
• Integrate advanced technologies (condition monitoring, predictive analytics) to enable data-driven decision-making.
• Ensure compliance with safety, regulatory, and quality standards.




• Strategic Improvement Planning




• Develop and execute long-term strategic improvement plans for both maintenance and reliability functions.
• Identify needed capital investments to asset life extension and mitigate operational risk.
• Lead cross-functional initiatives to improve equipment uptime, reduce unplanned downtime, and optimize total cost of ownership.




• Engineering Steering & Executive Reporting




• Drive an engineering steering process in collaboration with operational stakeholders to prioritize and execute reliability initiatives.
• Present progress, key metrics, and strategic recommendations to executive leadership on a regular basis.
• Ensure alignment between engineering, operations, and business objectives.




• Leadership & Financial Stewardship




• Manage departmental budgets, resource allocation, and capital planning for maintenance and reliability projects.
• Build and mentor a high-performing team of maintenance and reliability professionals.
• Collaborate with operations, engineering, and supply chain to align priorities and deliver business objectives.

Requirements:

• Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Industrial Engineering or related discipline from accredited College or University OR a High School Diploma/GED plus at least 15 years of previous work experience within industrial maintenance leadership roles.
• 7+ years of experience in reliability or maintenance leadership roles within heavy industrial environments.
• Previous experience with multi-site reliability program development and execution.
• Technical proficiency with and experience using CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management Systems) and Microsoft Office (Excel, Project, PowerPoint, Word).
• Expertise with reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) and predictive technologies and programs.
• Leadership skills to champion positive change, manage conflict to resolution, and maintain high morale.
• Excellent organizational skills, balancing multiple projects with attention to detail.
• Demonstrated ability to identify strategic improvement opportunities and act decisively to realize those opportunities.
• Ability to manage with a strategic focus; with clearly defined objectives and milestones.
• Excellent leadership, interpersonal and communication skills with the ability to build key relationships with cross-functional, internal, and external stakeholders.
• Ability to set priorities and deliver results in situations with shifting priorities.
• Knowledge of process safety management and environmental regulations.
• Willingness and ability to travel domestically <25%.

Physical Requirements:

• Ability to wear respiratory protection up to 12 hours a day with or without reasonable accommodation
• Ability to work in a hot production area wearing protective clothing for up to 12 hours a day with or without reasonable accommodation
• Ability to wear Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) in designated areas with or without reasonable accommodation

Compensation Information:
Salary Range: $145,907 - $240,599. This position is also eligible for a short-term incentive plan which is determined by the achievement of strategic objectives. The market rate for the role is typically at the midpoint of the salary range; however, variations in final salary are determined by additional factors such as candidate qualifications, relevant years of experience, geographic location, internal pay equity, and prevailing market conditions for the specific role.

Benefits: Gopher Resource is proud to offer a comprehensive benefits package that promotes the health, wellness, and financial security of our employees. List of benefit offerings include medical & pharmacy, dental, vision, health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), dependent care spending account, life insurance, disability programs, telemedicine, parental leave, tuition support, legal insurance, identity theft protection, gym membership discounts, EAP, 401(k) with a company match, and paid time off (vacation, personal, bereavement, holidays).

Gopher Resource is an Equal Opportunity Employer.