Head of Engineering

Senior Recruitment Consultant @ Douglas Pharmaceuticals

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Why this role matters

Join Douglas in 2026 in a pivotal role focused on leading the Engineering function across our New Zealand manufacturing operation. You will provide strategic leadership and operational direction to the Engineering team, ensuring our equipment operates reliably and efficiently at all times. As a key member of the Douglas Manufacturing Leadership Team, you will drive production and facilities assets performance, devise and deliver capital expenditure plans and champion a quality-focused, continuous improvement mindset.

Collaboration is at the heart of this role. As the leader of this critical service function, you will work closely with internal and external stakeholders including Manufacturing Operations, Supply Chain, Quality, R&D, Sales, and other internal and external customers. Your ability to deploy and motivate the team to meet and exceed customer expectations is critical to ensuring overall business success.

What you'll do

• People Leadership : Provide clear leadership and vision, inspiring and motivating your team to achieve excellence. Coach and develop team members to be their best and for those with potential, be great future leaders.
• Strategic Leadership : Implement engineering strategy and operational goals to exceed customer expectations for equipment and service provision, quality, cost, and delivery. Create and implement best-practice engineering vision, strategy, policies, processes, and procedures to support overall business goals.
• Operational Leadership : Ensure all engineering activities are delivered on time and executed in adherence to Quality and Compliance processes. Lead and live Lean thinking and Continuous Improvement culture across all manufacturing operations. Establish and maintain a robust and holistic asset performance management plan grounded in best practice and utilising latest developments in technology.
• Digital & Automation Enablement : Lead the Manufacturing thinking in digital vision and drive digital transformation throughout the manufacturing value chain to achieve continuously improving efficiencies, enhance quality outcomes and availability of important Business Intelligence data for agile tactical and strategic decision‑making.
• Financial Management : Prepare the annual Engineering department budget and forecast all Capital Expenditure proposals. Manage Engineering budgets and negotiate with suppliers to ensure mutually beneficial and high performance partnerships.

What you'll bring

About Us

At Douglas, we're more than just a company—we're a community of people driven to make a difference. We're proud to be one of New Zealand's biggest pharmaceutical success stories, and we're growing globally. Privately owned and future‑focused, our team of 500 includes scientists, engineers, and all kinds of experts, working together to create high‑quality healthcare products that help people around the world.

Next Steps

If you're invited to complete a video interview as the next stage of your application, we'd love you to embrace it. Video interviews allow more people the opportunity to demonstrate their abilities to the hiring manager in a new and innovative way, giving you a better chance of securing your ideal role. Relax, be yourself and don't worry, we all feel a bit awkward in front of the camera.

Feel free to reach out to Paula van Zijl, Senior Recruitment Consultant at Douglas Pharmaceuticals, for a confidential chat : / /

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