Senior Shift Engineer

Job Description

Senior Shift Engineer, Arla – Aylesbury Energy Centre\n\nAre 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?\n\nThis 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.\n\nThis is a shift‑based role working a Panama shift pattern (days and nights).\n\nHow you will make an impact\n\nAs a Senior M&E Technician, you will play a key role in ensuring operational reliability across a complex, high‑volume dairy production environment. Working a Panama shift pattern (days and nights), you will provide hands‑on engineering support while driving safety, performance, and continuous improvement.\n\n * Provide critical breakdown support across systems such as boilers, refrigeration, wastewater treatment, DAF plant, HVAC, and water systems\n\n * Lead and coordinate shift activities, setting the pace and standards for performance and safety\n\n * Plan and assign tasks at the start of your shift, balancing reactive and planned maintenance to optimise uptime and resource use, and actively manage delivery of the assigned plan through mid‑shift checkpoints, progress tracking, and end‑of‑shift handovers to ensure completion and continuity\n\n * Troubleshoot and diagnose faults using structured problem‑solving techniques, including root cause analysis, to improve long‑term reliability\n\n * Support and contribute to site projects of varying scale, inputting into ongoing site development and performance improvement initiatives\n\nChampion health and safety by following site standards, SOPs, and actively participating in risk assessments, while ensuring 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, and drive rapid root‑cause analysis to minimise downtime, ensuring equipment reliability and operational continuity.\n\nTackle issues calmly and professionally, maintaining clear communication and a structured approach under pressure, while championing 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, and work closely with the Team Leader to align on clear daily expectations, priorities, and performance targets.\n\nWhat will make you successful\n\nTo succeed in this role, you will be a proactive and technically capable engineer, comfortable working at pace in a regulated manufacturing environment.\n\nYou 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.\n\nYou bring structured fault‑finding and problem‑solving capability, including experience with root cause analysis, and 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.\n\nExperience with steam, process controls, cooling, data centres, clean water, and similar equipment is beneficial, though not essential. Most importantly, you’ll have a genuine passion for developing your skills, with access to extensive internal and external training to support your growth.\n\nWhat do we offer?\n\nYou 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.\n\nWe’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.\n\nAbout Arla – Aylesbury Dairy\n\nAylesbury is one of Arla’s flagship dairy sites in the UK\n\n * Annual processing capacity of over 1 billion litres\n\n * First dairy site to introduce AGV technology for moving TETs of milk\n\n * Cold store area equivalent to 1.5 times the size of Wembley Stadium’s pitch\n\n * Featured on BBC’s Inside the Factory and Channel 4’s Food Unwrapped\n\nWould you like to join us?\n\nIf 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.\n\nWe have a purpose for Good\n\nAt 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 .

To succeed, we need to hire people with a sustainable mindset. Could this be you?