Senior Maintenance Project Engineer

WHO WE ARE
At Ghirardelli, we honor tradition and drive innovation, aiming to be the top choice for premium chocolate. Our commitment to Making Life A Bite Better inspires both our products and the way we do business. We support personal and professional growth, recognizing that each employee’s contribution directly impacts Ghirardelli’s growth and success. Join our dynamic team and help shape Ghirardelli's future.
 

Job Summary

• Provide leadership and ownership for large capital equipment refurbishment, rebuild, and recommissioning initiatives, typically exceeding $100K, including long-range planning, prioritization, and execution oversight.
• Manage and govern OEM relationships, ensuring contractual deliverables, technical support, and service outcomes align with key project objectives and overall plant performance requirements.
• Lead major plant shutdown events, coordinating cross-functional internal teams and external contractors to ensure integration of labor, materials, spare parts, and equipment delivery while maintaining schedule and safety commitments.
• Oversee routine weekly and weekend shutdown strategies, optimizing equipment availability, maintenance planning resources, and work execution to minimize downtime and maximize asset reliability.
• Direct and mentor maintenance planning and inventory personnel, establishing expectations, developing capability, and driving accountability for scheduling effectiveness, procurement execution, and inventory control.
• Own CMMS governance and performance, ensuring planner outputs promote system utilization, data integrity, standardization, and continuous improvement of maintenance processes and asset records.
• Monitor, analyze, and communicate maintenance performance metrics, providing regular KPI reporting on reliability, cost control, schedule compliance, and resource utilization to support data-driven decision-making.
• Provide strategic leadership for multiple maintenance and reliability capital projects, ensuring alignment with organizational objectives, asset strategies, and long-term business priorities.
• Own project governance by defining and approving project scope, budgets, schedules, risk profiles, and success metrics; ensure projects are delivered consistently against performance expectations.
• Establish and enforce project management standards, incorporating Early Equipment Management (EEM) principles to drive equipment reliability, lifecycle optimization, and total cost of ownership improvements.
• Lead cross-functional process improvement initiatives, identifying systemic gaps across planning, production, and business workflows and championing scalable, sustainable solutions.
• Oversee concept development and feasibility evaluations, guiding teams through data-driven decision-making and prioritizing initiatives that deliver the highest operational and financial value.
• Manage external partnerships with OEMs, contractors, and service providers, setting expectations, monitoring performance, and ensuring commercial and technical accountability.
• Direct resource coordination across mechanical, electrical, and automation disciplines, balancing internal capabilities and external support to optimize execution efficiency.
• Ensure effective project handoff and operational readiness, aligning Production and Maintenance leadership on scope, schedules, training, and support requirements to enable seamless transition to sustained operations.
• Serve as a senior technical advisor to Maintenance leadership, providing strategic guidance on new equipment strategies, reliability risks, and preventative maintenance frameworks rather than day-to-day troubleshooting.
• Actively sponsor Continuous Improvement efforts, contributing leadership, mentorship, and subject-matter expertise to enterprise-wide initiatives focused on reliability, uptime, and operational excellence