Director of Maintenance Services

Director - Maintenance Services

The Director - Maintenance Services is a senior maintenance leader responsible for maintenance strategy, planning, scheduling, execution, and continuous improvement across Atlantic Sapphire's recirculating aquaculture facility. This role is accountable for preventive, predictive, and corrective maintenance programs; work management discipline; maintenance performance reporting; and safe, reliable execution for critical facility and process assets.

Reporting directly to the COO, this position partners closely with Operations, Production, Engineering, Water Quality, Facilities, and Procurement to maximize equipment reliability, uptime, safety, and cost effectiveness while protecting fish health and production continuity. Success in this role requires strong technical competence, disciplined planning and scheduling, and the ability to build a high-performance maintenance culture grounded in measurable results.

Core areas of responsibility:

Maintenance Strategy & Leadership

Safety is a core value to Atlantic Sapphire; this role leads by example to drive an accident and injury free workplace.

Lead maintenance services for the Bluehouse and supporting utility systems, establishing standards, priorities, and execution discipline across the facility.

Develop and implement a maintenance strategy that balances reliability, responsiveness, cost control, biosecurity, safety, and production continuity.

Solve problems to root cause and drive continuous improvement.

Preventive, Predictive & Corrective Maintenance

Establish and continuously improve preventive maintenance programs for mechanical, electrical, and utility assets using OEM recommendations, operating experience, and failure history.

Implement and manage predictive maintenance technologies and practices such as vibration analysis, thermography, oil or lubricant condition monitoring, ultrasound, motor condition diagnostics, performance trending, and inspection-based condition monitoring as appropriate.

Ensure corrective maintenance is prioritized, planned, executed, and closed out with appropriate documentation, root cause follow-up, and lessons learned.

Planning, Scheduling & Work Management

Own industry-leading maintenance planning and scheduling processes, including job planning quality, weekly scheduling, outage coordination, materials readiness, backlog control, and labor productivity.

Maintain an effective CMMS and work-management process covering work identification, prioritization, planning, scheduling, execution, history capture, and work order closure.

Improve wrench time and schedule compliance by ensuring work packages include scope, labor, parts, permits, tools, safety requirements, and estimated duration.

Performance Tracking & KPI Reporting

Develop and report maintenance and work-management KPI dashboards including PM compliance, schedule compliance, backlog aging, wrench time, mean time between failures, mean time to repair, emergency work, repeat failures, maintenance cost by asset class, and work order close-out discipline.

Analyze maintenance performance and equipment history to identify bad actors, recurring failures, and reliability improvement opportunities.

Lead root cause analysis and reliability improvement initiatives for chronic equipment and process system issues.

Technical Oversight of Critical Systems

Provide technical leadership for HVAC systems, industrial chilling and refrigeration interfaces, pumps, piping systems, valves, blowers, rotating equipment, heat exchangers, water treatment support systems, compressed air, standby power, and related balance-of-plant equipment.

Support sound maintenance practices for RAS-related process equipment, including filtration, oxygenation, degassing, water movement, and other mission-critical aquaculture support systems.

Partner with Engineering and Operations on shutdown planning, startup readiness, modifications, asset upgrades, and maintenance requirements for new or changed systems.

Budget, Contractors & Spare Parts Management

Develop and manage the maintenance operating budget and support capital planning for asset replacement, reliability upgrades, and major maintenance events.

Manage contractor performance, service agreements, and external specialty support to ensure safe, efficient, and cost-effective execution.

Oversee spare parts strategies, storeroom discipline, and critical spares identification to reduce downtime risk and improve maintenance responsiveness.

Safety, Compliance & Cross-Functional Partnership

Promote strong environmental, health, safety, and biosecurity practices in all maintenance activities, including lockout/tagout, confined space, hot work, and permit-to-work compliance.

Coordinate closely with Operations and Production to minimize disruption to fish health, water quality, and production plans during maintenance execution.

Support regulatory, insurance, and internal audit requirements related to maintenance, equipment condition, and facility integrity.

Skills, competences, and knowledge to perform the work:

• 10+ years of progressive maintenance, reliability, plant engineering, or technical operations experience in industrial processing, aquaculture, food manufacturing, utilities, water or wastewater, refrigeration, or similar continuous-process environments required.
• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Industrial Technology, Maintenance Management, or related field preferred. Equivalent combination of technical training and relevant experience will be considered.
• Demonstrated expertise in preventive, predictive, and corrective maintenance methodologies and in building disciplined maintenance work-management systems.
• Strong experience with maintenance planning and scheduling, CMMS administration, and maintenance KPI development and management.
• Technical competency with HVAC, industrial chilling and refrigeration support systems, pumping, piping, valves, motors, rotating equipment, and industrial utility systems.
• Ability to lead reliability and root cause efforts, prioritize competing work, and improve asset performance in a fast-paced operating environment.
• Strong communication and leadership skills with the ability to influence outcomes and drive execution through others.
• Understanding of facility systems, operations, automation, and subsystems.

Work Environment

This job operates in a combined office and production environment.

Schedule

Core business hours Monday through Friday with modified schedule as needed to support farm projects, outages, maintenance events, and urgent equipment issues. Expectation that responses to calls outside of standard work hours may be required based on operational needs.

Physical Demands

Climbing

Kneeling and Crawling

Reaching. Extending hand(s) and arm(s) in any direction

Sitting down. Particularly for sustained periods of time

Standing. Particularly for sustained periods of time

Walking

Pushing. Using upper extremities to press against something with steady force in order to thrust forward, downward, or outward

Lifting

Repetitive motion

International and National overnight travel

Travel 25% of time

Sedentary work and up to 10 pounds of force/lifting

Light work. Up to 20 pounds of force/lifting

Atlantic Sapphire is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and we are committed to create and inclusive environment for all employees. We will extend equal opportunity to all individuals without regard to race, religion, color, ancestry, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity), national origin, disability, age, genetic information, marital status, familial status, or any other status protected under applicable federal, state, or local laws.