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Florence, Kentucky, United States
Onsite
The only way to ignite change is to build the best team. At Bright Machines®, we're innovators and experts in our craft who have joined together to create a new category of manufacturing that will help transform the industry. We believe software and data are the answer, thoughtfully applied to solve our customers' unique challenges. Through intelligent automation, we give factories newfound flexibility, scalability, and resilience.
If you're a hands-on technical leader who turns floor-level troubleshooting into hard data, knows how to drive improvements through teams you don't manage, and can keep precision robotics running reliably across 24/7 production, we'd love to talk.
The Automation Reliability & Performance Manager is accountable for the performance of the robotic assembly equipment at CVG, our Florence, KY production site. You are the single point where everything our Automation Engineers learn on the floor comes together: every stop, fault, workaround, and fix. You make sure it's captured accurately, analyzed, and turned into prioritized improvements that raise machine availability.
You'll lead a team of Automation Engineers and report to Site Operations Director. You'll work across Automation/Controls, Software, Systems Engineering, Mechanical Design, Quality, and equipment vendors to drive those improvements to verified closure.
You'll also build the foundation that sustains the gains: a full-spectrum maintenance program, the moonshine shop (our on-site rapid-build space for fixtures, jigs, material presentation solutions and end-of-arm tooling), and the parts crib (our spare parts storeroom).
This is a 24/7 operation. Your engineers cover a primary on-call rotation, and you are the final escalation point. When an escalation reaches you, you respond, at any hour. If that isn't a commitment you can make, this isn't the right fit.
Own the data. Ensure every equipment stop is captured completely and correctly. That means standardized failure and downtime reason codes, consistent stop definitions (including microstops and short stops), and a clear split between machine-captured events and engineer-logged context. If the data is wrong, the priorities are wrong, and you own its integrity.
Collect feedback from the floor. Establish a structured way for Automation Engineers on every shift to log what they found, what they did, and what they suspect. Troubleshooting knowledge becomes data, not tribal memory. Run shift handovers and a weekly review of findings.
Analyze and prioritize. Pareto losses by frequency, duration, and impact. Separate chronic losses from sporadic failures, and identify bad-actor machines, stations, and failure modes. Maintain a ranked top-loss list that everyone works from.
Drive improvements across functions. Take the top losses to the teams who can fix them, with the data, root cause, and a proposed countermeasure. Own the action tracker and follow every item to closure.
Close the loop to machine design. Feed recurring failure modes back into Bright Machines equipment and software roadmap, so fixes land in the platform, not just on our floor.
Verify results. Confirm every countermeasure with before/after data. If availability didn't move, the item isn't closed.
Hold full accountability for technical availability across all equipment.
Represent technical performance at daily standups and gemba walks with data, root cause, and corrective action, not just a status update.
Report weekly on technical availability, MTBF, MTTR, top-loss closure rate, PM completion, open work orders, parts availability, and data capture completeness (stops with a valid reason code).
Surface trends, not just incidents. Escalate a developing reliability risk before the line stops.
Manage a team of Automation Engineers supporting 24/7 shift coverage.
Own scheduling, the on-call rotation, and response-time commitments for equipment issues.
Coach engineers on troubleshooting methodology, root cause analysis, and documentation discipline. How they log a fix matters as much as the fix.
Hire, develop, and performance-manage your team. Build bench strength so reliability doesn't depend on any one person.
Own maintenance safety practices for all robotic and automated equipment, including LOTO/energy control, NFPA 70E electrical safety, and safe work inside robot cells (ISO 10218 / ANSI/RIA R15.06).
Ensure safety systems (safety PLCs, light curtains, interlocks, e-stops) are verified during PM and machine acceptance, and never bypassed to recover uptime.
Partner with EHS on risk assessments and incident investigations involving equipment.
Asset criticality. Rank all equipment by production and safety impact. Use the ranking, together with loss data, to set PM depth, critical spares, and response priorities.
Autonomous Maintenance (AM). Design the daily clean-inspect-lubricate routines, visual standards, and checklists that assembly technicians own. Train your Automation Engineers to teach, audit, and improve those routines. Embed AM checks into the production startup sequence.
Preventive Maintenance (PM). Establish time- and cycle-based PM schedules driven by criticality and failure modes (PFMEA/RCM). Own the PM calendar and completion rate.
Corrective Maintenance (CM). Lead and document corrective actions when failures occur. Close the loop with root cause analysis so the same failure doesn't repeat.
Predictive Maintenance (PdM). Use equipment data, sensor trends, and AI-driven analysis to catch degradation before it causes unplanned downtime. Work with MES and Systems Engineering to integrate predictive triggers into the maintenance workflow.
CMMS and maintenance data. own the CMMS, including work orders, asset histories, failure codes, and PM scheduling. Serve as the primary technical contact with MES, Software Engineering, and Systems Engineering to connect it to machine event data. Keep maintenance data structured, accessible, and actionable, not a spreadsheet on one person's desktop.
Wear parts and calibration. Own the wear-parts replacement schedule and equipment calibration (e.g. robot TCP, vision systems) across all assets. Partner with Quality on measurement and torque-tool calibration under the quality system.
Serve as the technical point of contact for final machine acceptance at CVG.
Ensure every acceptance package is complete before sign-off: spare parts list, electrical and pneumatic schematics, PLC and robot backups, safety validation, and all physical and digital licenses.
Resolve documentation gaps or missing spares before the machine goes into production, not after.
Translate acceptance documentation into inputs for the criticality ranking, PM program, reason code structure, and parts crib.
Own and operate the rapid-build workspace used for fixtures, jigs, end-of-arm tooling, material presentation solutions and custom maintenance aids, hands-on when needed.
Prioritize and sequence build requests from engineering. Set and communicate realistic lead times.
Maintain tooling standards and a clean, organized workspace that supports fast, accurate fabrication.
Use loss data to target improvements on the most-used fixtures and tooling. Find the failure modes and fix them before they break.
Manage spare parts for all robotic and automation equipment on site, including min/max levels, replenishment cycles, and vendor relationships.
Implement a check-in/check-out system with traceability, and eliminate the "where is it?" problem.
Keep critical spares on hand and serviceable, so parts shortages don't cause downtime on your watch.
Manage the parts budget. Consolidate vendors and reduce carrying costs without compromising availability.
First 90 days: Stop and downtime data audited, and reason codes standardized. Engineer feedback process running on every shift. First top-10 loss Pareto published with owners assigned. Criticality ranking complete, critical spares identified, and on-call rotation formalized.
By 6 months: Weekly performance review running with cross-functional owners. Top losses showing verified reduction. PM program live in the CMMS, and AM routines running on critical equipment. Parts crib under check-in/check-out control.
By 12 months: Sustained improvement in technical availability. Recurring failure modes fed back into the equipment and software roadmap. First PdM triggers live. A team with enough bench strength that performance doesn't depend on any one person.
Bachelor's degree in Mechanical, Electrical, or Mechatronics Engineering, or equivalent hands-on experience.
7+ years in reliability, maintenance, or automation engineering, including 3+ years leading a technical team in a high-mix robotic or automated environment.
A track record of improving equipment availability through structured loss analysis. You can show the Pareto, the countermeasures, and the before/after numbers.
Experience building or fixing downtime and failure data capture, including reason code structures, stop definitions, and data quality discipline.
Proven ability to drive improvements through functions you don't manage, such as engineering, software, and vendors, using data rather than escalation.
Strong root cause analysis skills. You can run a 5-Why, fishbone, or PFMEA with your team, not just assign tickets.
Working knowledge of OEE loss structures and TPM, including what makes AM operator-owned, and of criticality-based maintenance planning.
Comfort with automation hardware: servo systems, pneumatics, vision systems, conveyors, and end-of-arm tooling.
Ability to read and troubleshoot PLC logic and familiarity with industrial robot controllers.
Solid grounding in maintenance safety: LOTO, NFPA 70E, and robot cell safety systems.
Experience leading technical machine acceptance, including schematics, spare parts lists, PLC backups, and license documentation.
Familiarity with data-driven or AI-assisted predictive maintenance; experience turning equipment data into maintenance triggers.
Experience building a full-spectrum maintenance program (AM, PM, CM, and preferably PdM), ideally from scratch.
CMMS experience (SAP PM, Fiix, UpKeep, or equivalent). Comfort with data tools (SQL, Power BI, or similar) for loss analysis.
Experience standing up or managing a spare parts storeroom with accountability for availability and cost.
Ability to develop and deliver training to engineers who then coach operators.
Clear written and verbal communication. Your reports are concise and your escalations are well framed.
Availability outside standard hours as the final escalation point for a 24/7 operation.
Experience in contract manufacturing or customer-facing production environments.
Background in electronics assembly, PCB handling, or server/data center hardware manufacturing.
Experience working with an equipment OEM's engineering team, or on the OEM side, feeding field performance back into machine design.
Hands-on experience with MES integration or working alongside software and systems engineering teams.
Formal RCM or FMEA facilitation experience.
Certified Maintenance & Reliability Professional (CMRP) or similar.
Formal Lean/TPM practitioner experience.
Bright Machines is a software-defined manufacturing company building the intelligent automation platform that makes factories smarter, faster, and more resilient. Our systems combine robotics, machine vision, and AI to handle the hardest parts of electronics assembly — and our field teams keep them running at the highest standard, every shift, every day.
We’ve been recognized as one of Forbes’ AI 50, named a “Technology Pioneer” by the World Economic Forum, and awarded “Best AI-based Solution for Manufacturing” by AI Breakthrough.