Engineering Team Leader

Engineering Team Leader

Location: Multiple sites – Vulcan Road, Hare Street, Field Street and Dale Street
Salary: Competitive, depending on experience
Department: Engineering

Are you a multi-skilled engineer with strong mechanical and electrical fault-finding skills and experience leading a team? Do you enjoy staying hands-on while coordinating maintenance activity, improving equipment reliability and keeping production running efficiently?

Our client is looking for an Engineering Team Leader to support engineering operations across its sites. This is a varied, hands-on leadership role where you'll be responsible for coordinating a small team of multi-skilled engineers, delivering planned and reactive maintenance, and ensuring plant and production equipment remain safe, reliable and fit for purpose.

Reporting to the Engineering Shift Manager, you'll combine your technical expertise with effective team supervision, proactive planning and fast decision-making. You'll work closely with Production and other departments to minimise downtime, meet production targets and maintain high standards of health and safety, food hygiene and product quality.

The Role

You'll lead the day-to-day delivery of planned preventative maintenance (PPM) and reactive maintenance, allocating work according to the skills and priorities of your team while remaining actively involved in troubleshooting and repairs. When breakdowns occur, you'll help diagnose faults quickly, identify the right corrective action and restore equipment to operation as safely and efficiently as possible.

You'll take a proactive approach to plant reliability, planning daily jobs, monitoring equipment performance and identifying opportunities to improve maintenance systems, procedures and overall equipment effectiveness. You'll also support plant start-ups and shutdowns, complete maintenance tasks independently where required, and ensure effective handovers between shifts.

A key part of the role will be developing and supporting your team. You'll provide direction, encourage good working practices and make sure tasks are completed to the required standard. You'll also coordinate contractors, oversee relevant engineering works and support the installation of electrical components and infrastructure, ensuring the correct risk assessments, method statements and sign-offs are in place.

You'll work closely with Production to balance maintenance priorities with operational demands, keeping managers informed of delays, equipment issues and any risks to output. You'll also help identify opportunities to reduce energy costs, improve equipment performance and replace ageing or faulty components before they lead to further problems.

Accurate record-keeping is essential. You'll ensure PPM and reactive maintenance paperwork is completed on time, job sheets are maintained, and parts and materials are correctly recorded through the site's computerised maintenance management system (CMMS).

Health, Safety & Food Hygiene

Working in food manufacturing means engineering decisions must always consider product quality, hygiene and safety. You'll ensure maintenance work is completed in line with site procedures, good manufacturing practice (GMP), food safety requirements and environmental standards.

You'll lead by example on health and safety, ensuring safe systems of work are followed and that appropriate risk assessments, method statements, isolations and protective equipment are in place. You'll also help investigate incidents, report hazards and near misses, and promote a positive safety culture across the engineering team.

You'll be expected to understand the importance of HACCP, PUWER, LOLER and COSHH requirements, applying the relevant controls to maintenance activities and ensuring equipment is safe and suitable for continued production.

What We're Looking For

You'll be a time-served, multi-skilled engineer with a strong mechanical and electrical background, ideally gained in a food manufacturing or FMCG environment. You'll have proven fault-finding ability across both disciplines, be confident interpreting complex electrical circuit drawings and have the practical skills needed to diagnose and resolve equipment problems under pressure.

An industry-recognised electrical qualification at HNC level or equivalent is required, alongside an appropriate electrical qualification such as the IET Wiring Regulations 18th Edition. Experience working with inverters, PLCs, pneumatics and machine-specific control systems will be valuable, as will familiarity with wider site systems such as SCADA, CCTV and access control.

You'll also have experience using a CMMS, planning maintenance activity and maintaining accurate technical records. Previous experience supervising or leading a small, multi-skilled engineering team would be beneficial, along with strong organisational skills and the ability to prioritise competing demands.

Experience in poultry slaughter or processing would be particularly advantageous. Additional strengths in welding and fabrication, electrical testing and inspection, or recognised health and safety training would also be welcomed.

Above all, you'll be a proactive and dependable team player who can communicate clearly, make sound decisions and motivate others. You'll need to remain calm under pressure, take ownership of problems and be flexible when engineering demands require additional shift cover, work outside normal hours or support during particularly busy trading periods.

How Success Will Be Measured

You'll play a direct role in improving plant reliability and production performance. Key measures will include overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), adherence to planned preventative maintenance schedules and the timely completion of daily engineering tasks.

The Opportunity

This is an opportunity for a capable multi-skilled engineer to take on greater responsibility, lead from the front and make a tangible difference to engineering performance across a busy food manufacturing operation.

If you combine strong technical ability with a practical, hands-on leadership style and understand the importance of keeping production safe, efficient and reliable, we'd like to hear from you