Maintenance Engineer

About us

Vow is a food company - a very different one. We’re creating real meat products from animal cells instead of the animal itself.

We’re bringing together cutting-edge innovations in science, engineering, culinary and design to make sustainable food that’s both irresistible and available to billions of people worldwide.

The role:

Do you like it when things just work? Do you like forging order from chaos? Like variety? Then join us in the Facilities team as a Maintenance Engineer to help improve all aspects of Vow life across our two Sydney sites in Alexandria.

As a Maintenance Engineer at Vow you'll be joining a team responsible for overseeing, coordinating and ensuring the completion of maintenance and continuous improvement of the property, plant and equipment across both of our Sydney sites.

The role involves a mix of planned and unplanned tasks that will see you solve many problems as they arise to ensure the safety of your fellow team members (AKA Vowzers) and our delicious products and the reliability of our growing array of equipment.

You’ll use a combination of your technical know-how, great communication skills and ruthless prioritisation abilities to keep on top of it all to help us make delicious food that is safe, tastier, more nutritious, more sustainable, and ultimately more affordable than what we eat today.

Desirable Skills and Attributes:

We care far more about your adaptable skills than the titles you've held. We're more interested in who you are and how you approach challenges than the exact roles you've performed in the past. Some of the things that we are looking for:

• Technical Proficiency: You have a technical mindset; which will likely be an engineering qualification with at least 1-2 years of experience in an engineering role.
• Project Leadership or Multitasking ability: Experience in leading projects or managing tasks with multiple stakeholders with the ability to multitask and prioritize effectively.
• Proactive problem solver: You have proven history in being able tokeep calm, assess a situation, decide on next steps and inform stakeholders in a timely and safe manner, no matter what the situation. You will look to identify blockers before they become a problem.
• Strong communicator: You have an approachable, friendly manner that encourages all team members to readily report blockers. You are able to use various communication forms (oral, written, presentations, etc.) to effectively coordinate with both internal teams and external partners.
• Strong record keeping: You have experience in SOP writing and/or process documentation experience
• Computer literacy: Familiarity with MS Office 365 or Google Gsuite, Notion, Slack etc. and a willingness to learn and utilise new platforms as needed on a regular basis
• Flexibility to carry out shift work/weekend work when required (with time in lieu accumulated accordingly)

Bonus if you have:

• Familiarity with food processing or bioprocessing equipment (e.g. mixers, fermenters, pumps, filters, centrifuges) or
• Familiarity with plant equipment e.g. large air compressors, specialty gasses, steam boilers, reverse osmosis systems, pumps etc.
• Management experience of any kind (teams of people, or over systems/spaces)
• Experience using a computerised maintenance management system (CMMS)

You will:

You’ll be performing a wide range of tasks in this role, no two days will be the same. Here are some of the things you can expect:

• Drive the continuous improvement of our new and existing factory equipment as we navigate a period of rapid growth and development across the organisation
• Coordinate contractors and service technicians
• Set rosters and ensuring their completion
• Communicate on critical work to internal stakeholders
• Roll up your sleeves, getting out the service manuals, tools and giving things a go
• Responding to calls for help with equipment or new problems to solve problems on the spot
• Have a roughly 50/50 split between organisational/desk work and hands-on activity
• Minimize risks to personnel, food safety and equipment reliability

Ultimately help to build a world-first cultured meat factory that will serve as the prototype and inspiration for all that follow

What success looks like:

• In the first month, you’ll:
  • Get oriented with our most important systems/equipment across our two sites
  • Start to take on responsibilities integral to the smooth running of our operations
  • Perform planned and unplanned maintenance on a broad range of equipment
• By the end of 3 months, you’ll:
  • Be a critical contributor to our HACCP/GMP compliance requirements
  • Making a real impact to the safety of your fellow Vowsers
  • Be challenging how we do things and drive forward improvements
• In your first year, you’ll:
  • Become an expert user of our systems and may have built/implemented a few of your own. For example, overhauling our monitoring and alerting systems, operational metrics/dashboards or establishing a maintenance software/data tracking/hardware implementation pipeline
  • Have numerous examples of parts of Vow that you have meaningfully and tangibly improved
  • Be taking an active role in determining the strategy of the Facilities team into the future
  • Have played a part in bringing multiple cultured meat products to the world

Who we are and why join:

• We are building a diverse, mission-led dream team of “Vowzers.” Our mission is to make food products for everyone. To do that well we need a workforce that’s representative of the people we serve. We celebrate multiple approaches and points of view - so we’re building a culture to match. Be yourself and come as you are.
• Work on cutting-edge technology. We’re bringing together cutting-edge innovations in science, engineering, and food, to recreate the world’s most tantalising and unique culinary experiences. All without compromising on ethics or our planet along the way. Since our inception in 2019, we have held the title of being the first startup to cultivate meat from the cells of an undomesticated animal, and have served up our exotic meats ranging from kangaroo dumplings to alpaca sliders in tastings with world-renowned chefs.
• Work with and learn from the best. Our team includes some of the world’s top scientists, innovators, operators, and creatives with decades of industry experience. Despite our experiences though, we all strive to build, break, learn, and repeat. We see the impossible as temporary and strive to learn and support our company and fellow Vowzers' growth as much as possible.
• We’re fully funded and ready to go. We are a growing Aussie biotech start-up backed by Blackbird Ventures, Square Peg Capital, Grok Ventures, Tenacious Ventures, P7 Ventures, Toyota Ventures, and PeakBridge VC.

Vow perks and benefits:

• Everyone is an owner. In addition to competitive base salaries, each and every ‘Vowzer’ owns equity in the company so we can all benefit from our hard work and future success.
• Generous paid parental leave. We offer 8 weeks of paid caregiver leave and an additional 8 weeks paid leave for the birth giver.
• Generous relocation budget & support. Support for interstate or overseas team members and their families (including pets)
• Flexible working hours and location. We value work-life balance. While we’re mostly back in the office, you’re free to choose the best way for you to work.
• Unlimited personal leave. At Vow we recognise that sometimes you need time off to recuperate, look after your mental health, or simply deal with an emergency. We put unlimited personal leave in place to empower you to truly bring your best self to work every single day and you are always paid for days taken off as personal leave.
• Heaps of tasty samples from our culinary centre. Our fantastic "food inventors" on the Vow team are always cooking up new product prototypes, and all Vowzers are given the opportunity to taste, give feedback, and learn from their culinary prowess.
• An awesome converted warehouse “campus” in Alexandria. Complete with a glass-walled lab, manufacturing line, free snacks, a culinary centre, and professional-grade coffee machine in our cafe, as well as a DIY workshop for all hands-on projects.
• Human and dog friendly office An inclusive community and culture, in a welcoming office, complete with friendly “Vowzer” dogs
• A variety of social clubs. We encourage all our Vowzers to build the culture with us and share what you love by creating social clubs across the business. From book clubs to hiking groups, we’re always looking for ways to learn and engage with our team.

You don’t have to have every listed requirement and skill to be a great fit - you may even teach us something about what we should be looking for If you are passionate about this opportunity and think you have the skills to succeed, please apply If not, but you know someone who might be interested, please share this post.