Equipment Department Manager - Semiconductors

Job Description

Key Responsibilities

Safety & Quality

• Lead with a zero-incident mindset; enforce safety standards and behaviours across all equipment areas and shifts.
• Maintain process and procedural discipline, and reduce maintenance errors through training, coaching, and standardized work.

Culture Transformation & Vision

• Shift the culture of the organization from reactive repair to proactive reliability, driving significant improvements in equipment uptime and factory output.
• Define and communicate a clear vision for equipment performance, and translate it into goals, metrics, and behaviors across all teams and shifts.
• Lead with integrity, accountability, and trust; build a high-performing team culture that owns outcomes.

Maintenance Strategy & Reliability

• Drive the transition from mostly corrective maintenance to mostly preventive and predictive maintenance, with clear targets and progress tracking.
• Build and sustain preventive maintenance programs, spare parts strategies, and reliability practices that reduce unplanned downtime.
• Use real-time KPIs and data analytics to identify chronic equipment issues, remove bottlenecks, and prioritize improvement efforts.
• Champion Lean practices and structured problem solving focused on uptime, quality, and cost.

Scaling, Training & 24x7 Coverage

• Scale the department's headcount, skills, and structure to match the growth of the factories, with clear hiring and capacity plans.
• Build a rigorous training and certification program that develops technicians and engineers quickly and consistently.
• Strengthen 24x7 coverage across all shifts, ensuring consistent technical depth, handoffs, and escalation paths.
• Set clear expectations; coach supervisors, technicians, and engineers to high standards of accountability, teamwork, and growth mindset.

Stakeholder Partnership Across the Company

• Partner with senior stakeholders overseeing construction, facilities, safety systems, and procurement to plan and deliver equipment installations, capacity expansions, and infrastructure support.
• Represent equipment readiness and constraints to factory operations and senior leadership and make data-driven recommendations on priorities and trade-offs.
• Engage vendors and suppliers to secure service support, spare parts, and timely equipment delivery.

Budget & Financial Management

• Own the department budget, including operating expenses (OPEX) and capital expenses (CAPEX); forecast, track, and report spending against plan.
• Develop and justify capital plans for new tools, upgrades, and capacity expansions.
• Manage service contracts and vendor agreements to balance cost, response time, and equipment uptime.
• Control spending on consumables and spare parts through usage tracking, inventory management, and cost-reduction initiatives.
• Align budget priorities with factory growth plans and make clear trade-off recommendations to senior leadership.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in engineering or a related field (advanced degree preferred), or equivalent experience.
• 10+ years in semiconductor or advanced manufacturing equipment engineering or maintenance, including 5+ years leading managers or supervisors in a shift-based, 24x7 environment.
• Demonstrated success shifting an equipment organization from corrective to preventive maintenance and improving uptime.
• Experience scaling an engineering and technician organization through rapid factory growth.
• Track record of building rigorous training programs and strengthening 24x7 support coverage.
• Proven experience managing department budgets, including OPEX, CAPEX, service contracts, and consumables.
• Working knowledge of semiconductor fab equipment, maintenance management systems, and reliability practices; compound semiconductor experience (GaAs/InP) is a plus.
• Strong leadership presence: executive communication, influence across construction, facilities, safety, and procurement, and the ability to operate independently with sound judgment.