Director, Engineering, Maintenance & Reliability
Nivagen Pharmaceuticals · Sacramento, California, United States
About the Company:
Nivagen is a global company dedicated to enhancing lives by developing and providing cost-effective generic prescription drugs and over-the-counter products for the North American market. For over a decade, we've remained steadfast in our commitment to the core values of excellence, integrity, and respect for people. Our team of professionals collaborates tirelessly to pioneer advancements in manufacturing, distribution, and quality control, ensuring a holistic approach to healthcare. Through vertical integration of the pharmaceutical supply chain, cutting-edge technology, and unwavering dedication to excellence, we continually strive to redefine medication accessibility and affordability. We prioritize our employees' well-being by offering competitive pay, comprehensive benefits, and robust training and development opportunities. By investing in our workforce and fostering a culture of growth and support, we empower our team to drive innovation and make a positive impact in the healthcare industry. At Nivagen, our mission is clear: to make a meaningful difference in people's lives by delivering high-quality, affordable medications while upholding the highest standards of integrity and excellence.
Job Location:
Nivagen Pharmaceuticals
3900 Duckhorn Dr, Sacramento, CA 95834.
About the Job:
The Director of Engineering, Maintenance & Reliability is accountable for the technical performance, compliance, reliability, and lifecycle management of the site’s aseptic manufacturing assets, and operational technology. The operation manufactures sterile liquid products in multiple presentations, including prefilled syringes, vials, and preformed bags, using isolators, Restricted Access Barrier Systems (RABS), formulation and filtration tanks, aseptic filling and sealing equipment, classified cleanrooms, and critical utilities.
This leader builds and directs the organization responsible for manufacturing and process engineering, automation and operational technology, maintenance execution, reliability engineering, capital projects, and asset lifecycle and obsolescence management.
The Director ensures that equipment, automation, and maintenance practices remain safe, reliable, qualified, validated, inspection-ready, and capable of meeting production requirements. The role partners closely with Manufacturing, Quality Assurance, Validation, Sterility Assurance, Microbiology, Environmental Health and Safety, Supply Chain, Information Technology, Finance, and corporate engineering.
This position requires a leader who can balance patient safety, product quality, sterility assurance, regulatory compliance, equipment availability, operational performance, and cost management in a highly regulated aseptic manufacturing environment.
Responsibilities:
1. Engineering Leadership and Organizational Development
- Lead the site Engineering, Maintenance, and Reliability organization and establish clear accountability for GMP-critical assets and systems.
- Develop an organizational structure that provides effective ownership of aseptic filling and packaging equipment, isolators and RABS, formulation and filtration systems, cleanrooms and HVAC, clean utilities, automation and OT systems, maintenance, reliability, calibration, and capital projects.
- Recruit, develop, coach, and retain engineers, maintenance technicians, reliability professionals, automation specialists, planners, supervisors, and technical subject-matter experts.
- Define technical ownership, escalation paths, decision rights, performance expectations, training requirements, and qualification standards.
- Build technical depth, succession plans, and sustainable internal capability for critical systems while using contractors and OEM support effectively.
- Promote a culture of safety, quality, disciplined execution, timely escalation, continuous improvement, and proactive risk management.
2. Aseptic Manufacturing Equipment
- Provide technical leadership and lifecycle ownership for syringe, vial, and preformed bag filling and closure systems; isolators; RABS; decontamination systems; component handling; inspection; leak testing; and associated support equipment.
- Ensure equipment design, operation, maintenance, and modification support aseptic processing requirements and the site Contamination Control Strategy.
- Drive reduction of equipment-related interventions, contamination risks, recurring failures, minor stops, rejects, and changeover losses within critical aseptic operations.
- Establish technical strategies for barrier pressure control, glove integrity testing, isolator leak testing, decontamination-cycle performance, transfer systems, alarms, interlocks, and equipment recovery following intrusive maintenance.
- Ensure maintenance methods protect critical surfaces, HEPA filters, glove systems, pressure boundaries, sterile pathways, and decontamination capability.
- Improve filling-line availability, throughput, yield, and reliability without compromising sterility assurance, product quality, data integrity, or validated operation.
3. Formulation, Compounding, and Sterile Filtration Systems
- Provide engineering ownership for formulation, compounding, hold, and filtration systems, including stainless-steel tanks, agitation, load cells, temperature control, transfer piping and hoses, filters, vents, and associated instrumentation.
- Ensure hygienic design, cleanability, sterilizability, drainability, material compatibility, and maintainability of product-contact systems.
- Partner with Process Engineering, Manufacturing, Quality, Validation, and Sterility Assurance to maintain control of mixing parameters, hold times, product temperature, sterile filtration conditions, filter integrity testing, and aseptic transfers.
- Provide technical oversight for clean-in-place, steam-in-place, single-use assemblies, sterile connectors, and product-contact change parts, where applicable.
- Lead or support investigations involving mixing variability, filter failures, integrity-test failures, equipment residues, tank or piping contamination, transfer losses, and other process-equipment issues.
4. Maintenance Management
- Own the site maintenance program for GMP and non-GMP assets, including preventive, predictive, condition-based, corrective, and emergency maintenance.
- Establish disciplined planning and scheduling, job plans, work-order prioritization, weekly scheduling, shutdown planning, backlog management, kitting, spare-parts control, and maintenance standard work.
- Improve schedule compliance and planned-work percentage while reducing reactive and emergency maintenance.
- Ensure maintenance work protects product, cleanroom classification, contamination controls, qualified systems, and validated state.
- Define requirements for equipment cleaning, disinfection, inspection, line clearance, functional testing, documentation, and release following maintenance.
- Establish controls for tools, lubricants, replacement parts, temporary repairs, foreign-material risks, and work within classified or product-contact areas.
- Ensure maintenance records are complete, accurate, timely, attributable, and inspection-ready.
- Manage maintenance contractors and service providers in accordance with site safety, quality, security, and contamination-control requirements.
5. Reliability Engineering
- Develop and execute a site reliability strategy for manufacturing equipment, facilities, utilities, instrumentation, and automation.
- Establish asset criticality based on patient safety, product quality, sterility assurance, regulatory compliance, personnel safety, production continuity, and business impact.
- Apply reliability-centered maintenance, failure modes and effects analysis, root cause analysis, bad-actor analysis, condition monitoring, defect elimination, and critical-spares analysis.
- Identify chronic failures and implement permanent engineering solutions rather t