Senior Shift Engineer, Arla - Aylesbury Energy Centre

Are you an experienced mechanical or electrical engineer who thrives in a fast‑paced, highly automated manufacturing environment? Are you looking to take the next step at a flagship dairy site with continued investment in people, facilities, and technology? This is an exciting opportunity to join Arla’s Aylesbury Dairy, a key site within the UK network, operating 24/7 and producing over one billion litres of product each year. This is a shift‑based role working a Panama shift pattern (days and nights).

How you will make an impact:

• As a Senior M&E Technician, you will play a key role in ensuring operational reliability across a complex, high‑volume dairy production environment.
• Provide critical breakdown support across systems such as boilers, refrigeration, wastewater treatment, DAF plant, HVAC, and water systems.
• Lead and coordinate shift activities, setting the pace and standards for performance and safety.
• Plan and assign tasks at the start of your shift, balancing reactive and planned maintenance to optimise uptime and resource use.
• Actively manage delivery of the assigned plan through mid‑shift checkpoints, progress tracking, and end‑of‑shift handovers to ensure completion and continuity.
• Troubleshoot and diagnose faults using structured problem‑solving techniques, including root cause analysis, to improve long‑term reliability.
• Support and contribute to site projects of varying scale, inputting into ongoing site development and performance improvement initiatives.
• Champion health and safety by following site standards, SOPs, and actively participating in risk assessments.
• Ensure the shift works towards achieving 90% planned versus actual maintenance through clear objectives and progress tracking.
• Elevate the team’s troubleshooting capability through hands‑on coaching, clear guidance, and best‑practice sharing.
• Drive rapid root‑cause analysis to minimise downtime, ensuring equipment reliability and operational continuity.
• Tackle issues calmly and professionally, maintaining clear communication and a structured approach under pressure.
• Champion a culture of continuous improvement, knowledge sharing, and strict adherence to quality and safety procedures.
• Coordinate shift coverage to prevent overlapping holidays and ensure adequate staffing at all times.
• Work closely with the Team Leader to align on clear daily expectations, priorities, and performance targets.

What will make you successful:

• You will be a proactive and technically capable engineer, comfortable working at pace in a regulated manufacturing environment.
• You will have experience working within FMCG, food, or similarly regulated manufacturing, performing a maintenance or engineering role on automated equipment.
• Ideally, you will be time‑served or apprentice‑trained as a mechanical, electrical, or multiskilled engineer, qualified to a minimum of NVQ Level 3, ONC, or equivalent.
• You bring structured fault‑finding and problem‑solving capability, including experience with root cause analysis.
• You are confident using CMMS systems such as SAP PM alongside Microsoft Office tools.
• You take pride in safe, reliable engineering practices and work collaboratively with colleagues across shifts.
• Experience with steam, process controls, cooling, data centres, clean water, and similar equipment is beneficial, though not essential.
• You’ll have a genuine passion for developing your skills, with access to extensive internal and external training to support your growth.

What do we offer?

• You will join a well‑invested site with an experienced, supportive engineering team who work together to maintain a high standard of safety, reliability, and operational excellence.
• We’re committed to your growth and development, offering internal and external training opportunities.
• You’ll enjoy a competitive salary, 24 days’ holiday, matched pension contributions up to 6%, life assurance, and flexible benefits.
• At Aylesbury, you’ll join a team proud of its high job satisfaction and steep learning curve, with plenty of challenges and support to help you succeed.

About Arla – Aylesbury Dairy:

• Aylesbury is one of Arla’s flagship dairy sites in the UK.
• Annual processing capacity of over 1 billion litres.
• First dairy site to introduce AGV technology for moving TETs of milk.
• Cold store area equivalent to 1.5 times the size of Wembley Stadium’s pitch.
• Featured on BBC’s Inside the Factory and Channel 4’s Food Unwrapped.

Would you like to join us? If you want to be part of a high‑performing engineering team at a flagship Arla site, we’d love to hear from you. Please apply as soon as possible, as applications will be reviewed on an ongoing basis.

We have a purpose for Good: At Arla, we strive to unlock the highest potential in each other while working together to create a sustainable future of dairy. We call it Stronger People Stronger Planet, and it is deeply anchored in our organisation and founded on our commitment to respecting human rights, increasing access to healthy dairy nutrition, inspiring good food habits, and improving the environment for future generations. To succeed, we need to hire people with a sustainable mindset. Could this be you?

Beware! Recruitment fraud: It has come to our attention that there are fraudulent emails and fake recruitment campaigns on the internet from people purporting to work for Arla Foods.