Director of Asset Management

EMEA Recruitment is seeking a Director of Asset Management to provide enterprise-wide leadership for the strategy, governance, performance, and continual improvement of a group’s European operations in a heavy industrial processing environment.

As the organization is transitioning towards a more structured, proactive, and performance-driven asset management approach, we’re searching for a strategic and highly operational leader to drive a step-change in how assets are managed throughout their lifecycle to realize value, support safe and reliable operations, optimize cost and risk, and enable the group’s long-term operational, sustainability, and strategic objectives.

Responsibilities of the Director of Asset Management:

• Develop, implement and maintain the group’s Strategic Asset Management Plan, ensuring clear alignment between asset management objectives, corporate strategy, operational budgets and related site performance targets
• Drive improvements in asset reliability, availability, maintainability, utilization and overall equipment effectiveness through disciplined reliability engineering and maintenance strategies
• Establish enterprise asset management policies, standards, lifecycle processes, decision rights and performance expectations across the asset portfolio
• Transition of maintenance to proactive and predictive models
• Implement consistent asset criticality, risk assessment and mitigation approaches for safety-critical, production‑critical and environmentally significant assets
• Provide functional leadership to site leaders in a matrix structure and build asset management capability across the organization by coaching leaders, developing competency frameworks and promoting a culture change towards ownership, accountability and continuous improvement
• Lead the design and deployment of an asset management system consistent with ISO 55000 principles, including value realization, alignment, leadership, assurance and continual improvement
• Ensure regular site presence and hands‑on operational support
• Define and monitor asset management KPIs, maturity assessments, assurance activities, audit outcomes and improvement plans across sites and functions
• Support capital allocation decisions by applying lifecycle costing, risk‑based prioritization and value‑based business cases for asset renewal, replacement and improvement programs
• Improve asset data quality, master data governance, asset hierarchy, condition information and digital asset management tools to support evidence‑based decision‑making

Requirements:

• Significant senior leadership experience in asset management, maintenance, reliability, engineering, operations excellence or capital‑intensive industrial operations
• Experience in metals processing, heavy manufacturing, chemicals, energy, utilities or another asset‑intensive environment is strongly preferred
• Degree in engineering, asset management, operations or a related discipline; postgraduate qualifications or professional certification in asset management, reliability or maintenance are desirable
• Degree in Mechanical Engineering or related technical discipline
• Strong understanding of reliability engineering, maintenance strategy, asset lifecycle management, risk management, condition monitoring and capital planning and proven track record in reducing reactive maintenance
• Multi‑site or multi‑country operational experience
• Ability to influence and lead in a matrix organization without direct authority
• Strong continuous improvement mindset (Lean, Six Sigma or equivalent)
• Experience with ISO 55000 or other enterprise asset management frameworks; proven ability to develop and implement asset management strategies, governance and enterprise standards across multiple sites
• Experience with asset data governance and digital tools supporting asset performance management
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills across technical and operational teams
• Comfortable working in complex, culturally diverse industrial environments

EMEA Recruitment is committed to promoting Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in the workplace. We act as a neutral third party in the recruitment process, basing our candidate searches on skills and experience. We welcome all applications regardless of age, gender, sex, relationship status, disability, race, religion/beliefs, or sexual orientation.