Depot Process and Continuous Improvement Engineer in Crewe

Freightliner is the UK's largest maritime intermodal logistics operator, transporting containers from all major deep-sea ports to our national network of inland terminals, as well as a leading operator in the UK Heavy Haul rail freight market. Freightliner has operations across Europe offering both Intermodal and Heavy Haul rail freight services seamlessly connecting European countries and the UK.

In the UK, the Freightliner Group operates under a number of legal entities including Freightliner Ltd, Pentalver Transport Ltd, and Pentalver Cannock Ltd. Freightliner was recently voted Rail Freight Company of the Year at the 2025 Multimodal Awards. We are a proud WORK180 endorsed employer for women, highlighting the company’s commitment to increased diversity and a supportive work culture for all employees.

Who are we looking for?

A vacancy has arisen for a Depot Process and Continuous Improvement Engineer, focussing on Continuous Improvement within the Engineering function of Freightliner to help ensure all depot processes and activities comply with relevant legislative requirements, standardisation and taking industry best practice across all engineering locations to ensure the safe operation of engineering activities using Lean Management Techniques and practices such as 5S.

On your first day, we’ll expect you to have:

• Experience of rolling out and Implementing Continuous Improvement and Lean Management Techniques.
• Strong awareness of Health and Safety Requirements.
• Excellent analytical and problem solving skills - able to analyse data to evaluate options, use facts and data to implement solutions.
• Ability to initiate, sponsor and implement required organisational change to optimise business performance.
• Excellent interpersonal skills with the ability to interact effectively with all levels of staff across the Freightliner UK/Europe region. Excellent communication skills both written and verbal.
• Ability to multitask and work well under pressure, prioritising tasks and workload and managing conflicting demands.
• Ability to navigate complex problems and ensure effective and sound decision making, systematically and under pressure.
• Ability to build healthy working relationships with business stakeholders while exhibiting independence and objectivity in thought and action.
• Effective management and delegation with the ability to build trust and motivate a team.
• Ideally experience of car manufacturing or rail engineering environments.
• Lean 6-sigma & engineering qualification (ideally).
• Willingness and ability to travel to our maintenance sites.

What your key responsibilities will be:

• Rolling out Continuous Improvement and Lean Management principles and practices.
• Develop and implement depot policies, procedures and processes to improve depot operations, activities, efficiency and safety standards.
• Best practice is to be rolled out across all engineering locations.
• Ensure a suitable training strategy is in place for relevant staff and teams to clearly understand continuous improvement, 5S and apply depot process and procedures.
• Focus on Lifting processes and procedures.
• Actively promote engagement, communication and dialogue within the team for the benefit of information flow, to embed best practice and to solidify management control and commercial and operational direction of the business.
• Work closely with internal and external customers to ensure fleet requirements are delivered development and provision of resources required to support new business or changes to business including preparation of business case in liaison with appropriate staff.
• Provide dynamic leadership skills to all staff and to develop the workforce to be capable of working confidently under their own initiative.
• Develop and publish relevant KPI’s to monitor effectiveness of depot processes and depot activities including safety performance.
• Responsible for ensuring group company and legislative safety procedures, controls, audits and associated documents are correctly enforced and maintained in support of fleet managers and depot managers.
• Challenge existing business protocols with your own initiatives, pro-actively adding value to the business.
• Promote a mindset of “Safety First” and instil an ethos of continual safety improvement within your area of responsibility.
• Support and drive good governance and control (including Sarbanes Oxley (‘SOX’)) principles within your remit, identifying any potential deficiencies in controls and immediately remediate.
• Get involved in any ad hoc projects, including M&A activity, as may be required, from time to time.

Our perks and benefits:

Our people are our most important asset. We strive to empower our employees, ensuring they are trained and competent, fit for work, always informed, and completely engaged in our culture that places safety and wellbeing firmly at the heart of everything we do. We are looking for the most committed and reliable individuals who possess the knowledge, skills and experience needed for their roles. In return we can offer considerable career progression, and a rewarding career in an award-winning team alongside:

• Competitive pay.
• Fantastic final-salary pension scheme after an initial qualifying period.
• Enhanced maternity & paternity pay.
• Access to the company's life assurance scheme.
• A range of benefits to make your own so you can get the most of your work and home life which will also help save you money and hassle. From reimbursement on health treatments, to savings on new cars.

This role requires frequent domestic travel between our Engineering facilities; Crewe, Ipswich and Southampton. This post is subject to standard pre-employment checks including employment references, medical & D&A screening and successful DBS background checks.