Lead E&I Engineer in Sittingbourne

Kemsley Paper Mill is offering an exciting opportunity for a Lead E&I Engineer to join our high-performing engineering team. In this pivotal role, you’ll collaborate across engineering disciplines and take ownership of E&I maintenance strategy, ensuring optimum performance, reliability, and safety across your area of responsibility. You will lead the planning and execution of routine E&I preventative maintenance, applying strong technical expertise to diagnose, resolve, and prevent complex engineering issues. Working proactively with colleagues across Engineering, Reliability, and Operations, you will ensure work is planned effectively and carried out to the highest standards.

What You Will Be Doing:

• Maintain a consistently safe working environment, ensuring full compliance with company safety procedures and all relevant legislation.
• Support the site’s Environmental Management System by identifying hazards, ensuring safe working conditions, and promoting efficient use of materials to reduce environmental impact.
• Lead and participate in engineering investigations, including root cause analysis, risk assessments, Safe Systems of Work (SSOW), and developing maintenance procedures.
• Contribute to DS Smith Way (Lean) activities within Operational departments, including morning Hub sessions.
• Act as the technical lead for problem solving and decision making, reporting findings and recommendations to key stakeholders.
• Plan and prepare maintenance activities, producing comprehensive work packs including method statements, RA/MS, isolation requirements, parts lists, manuals, and drawings.
• Estimate costs for maintenance tasks, considering labour, materials, specialist tools, and parts availability.
• Work with Production Planning and Management to develop optimal maintenance and shutdown schedules, ensuring clear communication with all relevant teams.

Please note: This role is part of the engineering callout rota. You will be on call 1 week in every 7, providing support, escalation, and guidance during engineering events impacting production.

What We Would Like To See:

• Time-served Electrical or Multi-Skilled Engineer with recognised qualifications.
• Experience working within a heavy manufacturing or industrial engineering environment.
• Strong understanding of core electrical principles, industrial infrastructure, and site-wide electrical systems.
• Knowledge of Automation, Controls, and Instrumentation, including experience with variable speed drives.
• Familiarity with relevant electrical and automation standards.
• A strong team player with the ability to collaborate effectively across departments.

What We Can Offer You:

• Competitive salary
• Discretionary bonus
• 25 days holiday + bank holidays
• Pension scheme, life assurance & income protection
• Salary sacrifice electric car scheme
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Employee discounts & digital GP services
• Cycle to Work scheme

We are DS Smith, together with International Paper, we are a global leader in sustainable packaging solutions and other fibre-based products. We believe a better, more sustainable tomorrow is possible with the right people, who challenge and support one another to enact positive change. We employ more than 65,000 colleagues in North America and Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), who are experts in innovation, manufacturing, design, sales, sustainability, supply chain, and much more. Together with our customers, we make the world safer and more productive, one sustainable packaging solution at a time. Become part of a world‑leading organisation and do your best work with us! Our people come from diverse backgrounds, bring different perspectives, ideas and experiences to generate unique solutions focused on present and future sustainability challenges. We welcome all candidates to apply, even those not meeting all criteria.