Engineering Lead - Cocoa Bean Process Plant

Location: Chirk, Wales, United Kingdom; onsite at a cocoa bean process plant

Salary: £39.10 per hour + PAYE

Company

hirify.global is recruiting for a contract engineering leadership role supporting operations at a manufacturing process plant.

What you will do

• Lead, coach, and develop multidisciplinary engineering, technical, and maintenance teams across mechanical, electrical, and instrumentation disciplines.
• Implement lean manufacturing methods including 5S, Kaizen, Value Stream Mapping, SMED, TPM, and Root Cause Analysis.
• Transform the plant from reactive maintenance to preventative and predictive maintenance using SAP CMMS, condition monitoring, and risk-based schedules.
• Own asset management, plant reliability, lifecycle cost optimisation, breakdown investigations, and corrective actions.
• Lead equipment upgrades, replacements, process improvements, and CapEx projects while collaborating with Production, Quality, Health & Safety, and Supply Chain.
• Maintain engineering compliance, documentation, audit readiness, and safe operating standards.

Requirements

• Significant engineering or maintenance leadership experience in a manufacturing or process plant environment.
• Proven experience implementing lean manufacturing techniques and transitioning maintenance strategies from reactive to preventative or predictive models.
• Strong knowledge of CMMS platforms, ideally SAP, and experience with asset reliability practices.
• Experience managing multidisciplinary engineering teams in a 24/7 operational environment.
• Solid understanding of health and safety legislation and regulatory compliance in manufacturing.
• Ability to work onsite in Chirk, Wales.

Nice to have

• Food industry experience.
• Degree or equivalent qualification in an engineering discipline.
• Lean Six Sigma Green Belt or Black Belt certification.
• Experience with vibration analysis, thermography, ultrasonic testing, Industry 4.0, or IoT-enabled monitoring.

Culture & Benefits

• Contract engagement with PAYE compensation.
• Focus on continuous improvement, accountability, operational excellence, and safety.
• Opportunity to influence plant reliability, maintenance strategy, and engineering capability.