Engineering - Engineering Support Manager in Whitefield

Join to apply for the Engineering Support Manager role at Finsbury Food Group.

Location: Kara Foodservice, Manchester. Shift: Monday to Friday. Salary: Competitive.

We have an exciting opportunity for an Engineering Support Manager to join our Engineering team at our Kara site as part of Finsbury Food Group. Established in 1985, Kara offers a wide range of quality sweet and savoury bakery products, including both gourmet butter and vegan brioche buns, doughballs and teacakes. The Kara Bakery can bake over 1 million baps and burger buns every day.

In this role, you will support asset reliability by planning, scheduling, and coordinating engineering activity through the EAMS. Reporting to the Engineering Manager, you will help drive preventative maintenance, reduce downtime, and support a proactive, data‑led approach to improving equipment availability and site performance.

What you’ll actually do!

• You’ll be at the centre of day‑to‑day engineering activity, working closely with shift engineering teams to plan, review, and prioritise work.
• Each day, you’ll liaise with Engineering Shift Leads to review the previous day’s activity, understand what was completed, what changed, and why — then build and communicate the current day’s schedule to ensure resources are used effectively.
• You’ll coordinate engineering work through the Enterprise Asset Management System (EAMS), ensuring jobs are planned, scheduled, and aligned with production requirements.
• You’ll work closely with Production Schedulers to align asset availability and maintenance windows, and with internal and external contractors to ensure work is planned correctly and documentation is in place.
• On a weekly basis, you’ll set and track engineering KPIs such as schedule adherence, downtime, and PPM compliance, reporting performance into T2 meetings with clear insights and recommendations.
• You’ll analyse data from EAMS to identify trends, gaps, and opportunities for improvement, turning this information into clear, actionable plans that help move the engineering function forward.
• A key challenge in the role will be ensuring engineering stores and spares availability is accurate and up to date.
• You’ll liaise regularly with internal teams and external suppliers to support planning and minimise delays to engineering work.
• As the site EAMS super user, you’ll support system users, maintain accurate asset and user data, and help drive consistent, effective use of the system across the site.
• You’ll play an important role in supporting the shift from reactive maintenance to a more proactive, planned, and data‑driven engineering operation.

Ideally this is you!

• Organised, energetic, and highly detail‑oriented
• Strong IT literacy with confidence using EAMS or similar systems
• Analytical mindset with the ability to turn data into clear action plans
• Excellent communication and people skills, comfortable liaising across teams
• Confident working in a fast‑paced, FMCG or manufacturing environment
• Strong scheduling, coordination, and administrative capability
• Proactive and attentive, with a continuous improvement mindset
• Able to challenge constructively and support change positively
• Engineering background not essential however system, planning, and organisation skills are key

What’s in it for you?

• Enhanced Maternity & Paternity Leave to allow quality time with your new arrival!
• Enhanced Pension Scheme for our employees
• Death in Service Benefit
• Free Employee Assistance Programme (open to colleagues and their families)
• Retail discounts accessible via our Benefits Hub platform!
• Company shop available at sites (heavily discounted, yummy products!)
• Refer a Friend Scheme (up to £300 per referral – t&cs dependent)
• Employee Recognition Awards
• Extensive Learning & Development opportunities (including opportunities for sponsored professional memberships and our own in‑house development course!)
• An opportunity to be part of a fantastic, growing organisation.

Our vision is to be the leading specialty bakery group in the UK and we want the best people in place to achieve this. Our continued success is built entirely on the talented people who work here, so employee development is important to us because everyone is a valued member of the team, and we want every individual to have the skills and capabilities to achieve both their own personal goals and our business goals. We want good people to join our company, to help our company continue to go from strength to strength. If this sounds like you, please get in contact to learn more!