Director, Reliability Engineering

Description & Requirements

Smurfit Westrock (NYSE:SW) is the go-to leader and partner of choice in sustainable packaging. We are dedicated to creating efficient and scalable paper and packaging solutions to help solve complex packaging challenges. Guided by our values of safety, loyalty, integrity and respect, we are committed to delivering meaningful value for shareholders, customers, employees and the communities where we operate.

The Opportunity

The Director of Reliability is a senior leader within Smurfit Westrock’s Manufacturing Technical & Innovation (MTI) organization, responsible for reliability, maintenance planning, and storeroom strategy across the North American mill system. This role ensures mill reliability programs, standards, and support mechanisms are consistently deployed to maximize asset availability, predictability, and lifecycle value.

Reporting to the Vice President, Manufacturing Technical & Innovation (MTI), the Director of Reliability leads a team of subject matter experts and works in close partnership with mill leadership, engineering, capital planning, and corporate functions. The role serves as a key connector between strategy and execution, ensuring the right resources are applied to the right activities to deliver measurable improvements in asset performance, safety, and cost.

The Director of Reliability is expected to role-model Smurfit Westrock’s culture that values safety, inclusion, collaboration, operational excellence, and continuous improvement, while driving accountability and results across a complex, multi-site manufacturing network.

How You Will Impact Smurfit Westrock

The Director of Reliability plays a critical role in strengthening the performance and resilience of Smurfit Westrock’s manufacturing assets by:

• Improving mill asset availability, efficiency, and predictability
• Establishing consistent reliability, planning, and storeroom standards
• Enabling data-driven decision making through KPIs and reliability systems
• Supporting capital planning, outages, and long-term asset strategies
• Building organizational capability in reliability leadership and execution

This role ensures reliability efforts are aligned with enterprise priorities and integrated into broader operational and capital strategies.

Key Responsibilities

Reliability Strategy & Standards

• Develop, deploy, and continuously improve reliability, maintenance planning, and storeroom standards, procedures, and guidelines across the mill system.
• Ensure consistency in reliability practices while allowing flexibility for site-specific needs.
• Align reliability programs with mill goals and MTI priorities.

Assessments & Continuous Improvement

• Own the reliability, planning, and storeroom assessment process, ensuring assessments are effective, actionable, and results-oriented.
• Partner with mill teams to develop short-term and long-term reliability improvement plans based on assessment outcomes.
• Track progress and ensure sustained improvement through follow-up and coaching.

Mill Support & Technical Leadership

• Provide technical and strategic reliability support to mills for:
• Reliability improvement initiatives
• Capital projects
• Major outages
• Support mills in developing long-term capital plans aimed at improving or sustaining asset performance and reliability.
• Serve as a trusted advisor to mill leadership on asset health, risk, and reliability strategy.

Collaboration & Knowledge Sharing

• Foster collaboration across all mills by supporting and facilitating:
• Roundtable meetings
• Networking calls for mechanical, electrical, planning, and storeroom teams
• Identify, validate, and scale practices from industry and high-performing mills.
• Encourage peer learning and consistent application of proven reliability practices.

Data, KPIs & Systems

• Lead the implementation of reliability KPIs and information management systems.
• Leverage CMMS and reliability data to drive informed, data-based decisions.
• Promote consistent use of systems and metrics to improve transparency.

People Leadership & Culture

• Establish clear performance goals and objectives for each Reliability team member.
• Lead, develop, and mentor a high-performing reliability team.
• Promote a culture of safety, inclusion, engagement, and accountability by serving as a role model for Smurfit Westrock’s Vision, Values, and Behaviors.
• Ensure strong succession planning and capability.

What You Need To Succeed

Industry & Technical Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical or Electrical Engineering preferred; other engineering disciplines acceptable with demonstrated mill reliability leadership experience.
• Minimum of 10 years of experience in manufacturing reliability.
• Experience in the paper industry is required.
• Working knowledge of CMMS systems; JDE and/or SAP experience preferred.

Leadership & Execution

• Proven ability to lead and influence across a distributed, multi-mill organization.

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