Operations Maintenance Manager

Job title: Operations Maintenance Manager

Location: Warton – onsite

Salary: £63,310+ depending on experience

What you’ll be doing:

• Lead by example in promoting a zero-harm culture, ensuring full compliance with health, safety and environmental policies and all relevant legislative requirements. Lead incident investigations and continuously strengthen safe systems of work
• Ensure continued airworthiness and operational readiness, maintaining robust processes that support product conformity, process capability and audit readiness. Operate in full compliance with Part 145-aligned practices and MAA / CAA regulations, including airfield inspections, defect reporting, NOTAM requirements and readiness for flight test and delivery operations
• Manage maintenance budgets effectively, optimising spares usage, reducing breakdown costs and actively supporting cost-reduction and efficiency improvement initiatives
• Provide strong, visible leadership to a multi-skilled maintenance workforce, developing capability, confidence and accountability across the team. Build an inclusive, high-performance culture focused on technical excellence, safety and continuous improvement. Lead internal and external audits, safety cases, risk assessments and permit-to-work systems
• Plan and deliver reactive, planned and predictive maintenance, ensuring all activities are completed safely, efficiently and to schedule across complex plant and infrastructure, including subtractive CNC machining, pressure systems, chemical processing lines, robotics and automated manufacturing cells.
• Monitor and analyse KPIs to drive improvements in asset availability, MTBF/MTTR, backlog reduction and adherence to preventive maintenance schedules
• Champion digital maintenance and asset-management solutions, enhancing CMMS capability, condition monitoring and predictive analytics to support data-driven decision making, improve throughput, reduce downtime and extend asset life

Your skills and experiences:

Essential:

• Outstanding communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence, manage conflict and allocate resources effectively. Proven leadership experience within a maintenance, manufacturing or operational environment, delivering against demanding KPIs, with strong financial acumen including budget ownership and cost control
• Strong technical understanding of mechanical and electrical maintenance within complex, high-hazard or high-availability production environments, enabling effective decision-making and operational leadership
• Demonstrated ability to deliver measurable performance improvements through the application of SQCDP, Lean principles, TPM and continuous improvement methodologies, supported by data-driven maintenance and asset management approaches
• Sound knowledge of health, safety and regulatory requirements, with a clear understanding of the behaviours and culture required to achieve and sustain compliance in safety-critical environments

Desirable:

• Degree, HNC/HND or equivalent qualification in Engineering or a related discipline, with additional leadership or management qualifications such as ILM, CMI or equivalent
• Working knowledge of continuous improvement and reliability methodologies, including Six Sigma, Lean Manufacturing, Reliability-Centred Maintenance (RCM) and Root Cause Analysis (RCA)
• Good understanding of relevant safety, statutory and regulatory frameworks, including LOLER, PUWER, COMAH, LOTO, UEC, FOD and RADHAZ, within a safety-critical or highly regulated environment

Benefits:

As well as a competitive pension scheme, BAE Systems also offers employee share plans, an extensive range of flexible discounted health, wellbeing and lifestyle benefits, including a green car scheme, private health plans and shopping discounts – you may also be eligible for an annual incentive.

The Operations Maintenance Team:

We are seeking an experienced and dynamic Operations Maintenance Manager to lead the maintenance function within our MSDU and Military Aircraft production environments. This is a pivotal leadership role, accountable for ensuring production readiness, asset reliability, legislative compliance and continuous improvement across a broad portfolio of high-value manufacturing assets.

The role leads a multidisciplinary maintenance team supporting critical defence production operations, including subtractive CNC machine tools, automated manufacturing and process lines, chemical processing facilities, aircraft final assembly and spray facilities, operational hangar assets, airfield lighting infrastructure, aircraft ground support equipment, and a wide range of associated production plant, equipment and test facilities.

Why BAE Systems?

This is a place where you’ll be able to make a real difference. You’ll be part of an inclusive culture that values diversity of thought, rewards integrity, and merit, and where you’ll be empowered to fulfil your potential. We welcome people from all backgrounds and want to make sure that our recruitment processes are as inclusive as possible. If you have a disability or health condition (for example dyslexia, autism, an anxiety disorder etc.) that may affect your performance in certain assessment types, please speak to your recruiter about potential reasonable adjustments.

Please be aware that many roles at BAE Systems are subject to both security and export control restrictions. These restrictions mean that factors such as your nationality, any nationalities you may have previously held, and your place of birth can restrict the roles you are eligible to perform within the organisation. All applicants must as a minimum achieve Baseline Personnel Security Standard. Many roles also require higher levels of National Security Vetting where applicants must typically have 5 to 10 years of continuous residency in the UK depending on the vetting level required for the role, to allow for meaningful security vetting checks.

Closing Date: 30th January 2026

We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive sufficient applications for the role. Therefore, if you are interested, please submit your application as early as possible.

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