Lead Engineer

At Weetabix, we believe that diverse teams drive better ideas, stronger decisions, and a more inclusive workplace for everyone. We’re committed to building an organisation where people from all walks of life feel they belong—where different voices, experiences, and backgrounds are valued and respected.

Weetabix is on an exciting growth journey, and many of the opportunities we are recruiting for are newly created roles. These positions reflect our investment in people, capabilities and innovation as we continue to build for the future.

The Recipe (About the Role)

As a Lead Engineer, you will provide day-to-day engineering leadership for a manufacturing shift, ensuring equipment and processes run safely, reliably, and efficiently. Working closely with a team of multi-skilled engineers, you will coordinate planned maintenance, respond to breakdowns, and support strong shift performance. Balancing hands-on technical expertise with people leadership, you will support skills development, uphold high engineering standards, and ensure maintenance is delivered effectively. You will play a key role in maximising asset uptime, reducing downtime, and enabling the shift to consistently achieve production, safety, and quality targets.

• Provide day-to-day coordination and assistance to a multi-skilled engineering team, prioritising workload to align with operational needs and maximise efficiency.
• Deploy engineering resource effectively, matching skills to tasks to minimise downtime, remove bottlenecks, and improve overall productivity.
• Aid team development through targets setting, performance reviews, coaching and structured development planning, including apprentices.
• Deliver hands-on technical assist, mitigating to breakdowns and assisting the resolution of priority issues to maintain safe and efficient operations.
• Prepare and contribute to shift reporting, including engineering updates, breakdown trends and impact on manufacturing performance.
• Ensure all engineering activity meets company standards and complies with Health and Safety, Food Safety, and statutory requirements.
• Manage Permit to Work processes, ensuring safe control of contractors, high-risk activities and maintenance work.
• Maintain accurate use of the Computerised Maintenance Management System (CMMS), ensuring high-quality data, timely job closure and effective use of maintenance history.
• Provide coaching and training to engineering and production colleagues, building capability and assisting long-term team development.
• Carry out additional tasks in line with the role, assisting wider business needs as required.
• Work across a fast-paced manufacturing environment, prioritising engineering barriers across multiple production facilities.
• Guide root cause investigations using methods such as Root Cause Analysis, Five Whys, and Failure Modes and Effects Analysis to deliver lasting corrective and preventive actions.
• Assist major breakdowns and technical issues, driving rapid fault resolution and reducing downtime.
• Partner with engineering and operational teams to improve reliability, performance, and continuous improvement.

The Ingredients (What we need from you)

• Engineering maintenance expertise across mechanical, electrical and control systems in complex manufacturing.
• Experience developing engineering capability, including assisting teams and apprentices across maintenance and improvement activities.
• Proficient in Computerised Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS), using data to improve planning and inform outcomes.
• Clear insight of manufacturing operations and impact on Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), downtime, cost, quality and waste.
• Works jointly with production and engineering teams to align maintenance planning, scheduling and continuous improvement.

Your Bowl of Perks (Benefits)

• Competitive salary & Annual Flexible benefits.
• Annual bonus.
• Double-matched pension scheme (up to 12% from us).
• 25 days annual leave increasing with service.
• Annual Salary review.
• Healthcare plan.
• Discounted Weetabix products.

To support our employees, we also offer:

• Continued investment in your personal development.
• Balance, whether it’s for family, rest or simply time for you. As well as your holiday entitlement, you can purchase up to 5 days of additional annual leave.
• Access to 24/7 counselling service (via Grocery Aid partnership).
• The freedom of Flexible Work Opportunities.
• Enhanced Maternity / Paternity / Adoption Leave.
• Additional Time Off for Fertility Treatment and Neonatal Care.
• Working Parents Support Group.
• Fully stocked kitchens filled with our delicious products for you to enjoy.

To learn more about life at Weetabix, visit our careers page.