Director – Equipment Engineering & Maintenance
Director – Equipment Engineering & Maintenance
Location: Caribbean
Industry: Marine Terminal / Port Operations
Flagship Management is conducting a search for an experienced Director of Equipment Engineering & Maintenance to lead the engineering, maintenance, and reliability function for a marine terminal operation.
This is a leadership position responsible for a technical organization supporting a large fleet of mission-critical cargo-handling and terminal equipment. The successful candidate will bring strong technical expertise combined with demonstrated ability to lead through managers and supervisors and drive performance through systems, KPIs, and accountability.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead a 50+ FTE engineering and maintenance organization, including managers, supervisors, engineers, technicians, and skilled trades.
- Drive equipment availability, reliability, safety, and operational readiness across a diverse heavy-equipment fleet.
- Develop a proactive maintenance culture focused on preventive, predictive, and reliability-centered maintenance.
- Manage departmental performance through CMMS/EAM systems, KPIs, dashboards, and structured performance reviews.
- Establish and track metrics including equipment availability, MTBF, MTTR, PM compliance, downtime, backlog, labor productivity, and maintenance cost.
- Improve maintenance planning and scheduling while reducing reactive and emergency work.
- Lead root-cause analysis and corrective actions for recurring or significant equipment failures.
- Develop equipment lifecycle, refurbishment, replacement, and capital investment strategies.
- Manage operating and capital budgets, OEM relationships, contractors, service providers, and critical spare-parts strategies.
- Partner closely with terminal operations to ensure equipment readiness supports vessel, yard, and customer requirements.
- Develop managers and supervisors while building a culture of safety, accountability, reliability, and continuous improvement.
Candidate Profile
- Significant leadership experience in equipment engineering, maintenance, reliability, or asset management.
- Proven experience leading large technical teams of 50+ employees, including management and supervisory layers.
- Demonstrated ability to lead through people, systems, and KPIs rather than direct day-to-day intervention.
- Strong experience with CMMS/EAM systems and data-driven maintenance management.
- Background managing complex mechanical, electrical, hydraulic, and electronically controlled heavy equipment.
- Demonstrated success improving equipment availability and reducing downtime and maintenance costs.
- Experience managing significant operating and capital budgets.
- Excellent communications – ability to engage all levels of the organzation
- Bachelor’s degree in Engineering or related technical discipline preferred.
Experience within marine/container terminals, ports, intermodal operations, mining, heavy industry, material handling, or other asset-intensive environments is highly desirable.
The Ideal Candidate
We are seeking a strong operational leader and change agent who can develop people, strengthen systems, establish accountability, and move a large maintenance organization from reactive maintenance toward a disciplined, proactive, and KPI-driven reliability culture.
Relocation to the Caribbean is required.
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