About Jerritt Canyon
The Jerritt Canyon deposit was discovered in 1972, and the first gold production from the property occurred in 1981. The Jerritt Canyon property contains 30,821 hectares of mining claims located in the mining-friendly state of Nevada. First Majestic acquired the Jerritt Canyon Gold Mine from Sprott Mining Inc. on April 30, 2021. In May 2023, operations were suspended to prioritize exploration and technical studies. Jerritt Canyon is now entering a new phase of evaluation and planning, requiring substantial technical support to advance the work necessary for a potential future restart of operations.
The Opportunity
The Reliability Engineer will be responsible for improving the reliability, availability, and maintainability of the processing plant's fixed assets. As Jerritt Canyon prepares for restart, this role will play a key part in returning existing equipment to reliable service following extensive refurbishment, and in ensuring new capital installations are maintainable and supported by sound maintenance strategies from day one. This role will work closely with Maintenance, Operations, Engineering, Projects, and other site functions to identify equipment reliability risks, eliminate recurring failures, optimize maintenance strategies, and improve overall asset performance.
The ideal candidate has hands-on experience in a mineral processing or heavy industrial environment and a strong understanding of reliability engineering principles, predictive and preventive maintenance, failure analysis, and asset management.
Responsibilities
- Ensure reliability activities are performed in accordance with MSHA and other applicable safety, environmental, regulatory, and company requirements.
- Lead or support condition assessments of existing plant assets returning to service after care and maintenance, and help prioritize refurbishment scope based on criticality and risk.
- Conduct equipment criticality assessments and develop asset-specific reliability strategies.
- Participate in design reviews for new capital installations to make sure maintainability, access, standardization, and condition-monitoring needs are built in.
- Work with Maintenance and Engineering teams to evaluate equipment modifications, upgrades, and replacement options using lifecycle cost and reliability considerations.
- Collaborate with procurement and suppliers to evaluate equipment performance, reliability, warranty issues, and technical specifications.
- Participate in Management of Change (MOC), risk assessments, and engineering reviews related to equipment and process changes.
- Support commissioning and start-up of new and refurbished equipment by establishing appropriate maintenance and reliability strategies.
- Build or update the CMMS asset hierarchy, equipment master data, preventive maintenance routines, and critical spares lists for new and refurbished equipment ahead of handover to Operations and Maintenance.
- Capture vendor documentation, OEM recommendations, and baseline condition data during commissioning to support long-term reliability tracking.
- Develop and maintain equipment reliability standards, maintenance strategies, inspection plans, and engineering documentation.
- Develop, implement, and continuously improve reliability strategies for process plant equipment and critical assets.
- Provide engineering support for process plant equipment, including crushers, conveyors, grinding mills, roasters and associated off-gas systems, carbon-in-leach circuits, carbon handling, elution and regeneration, pumps, thickeners, compressors, blowers, fans, baghouses, electrical systems, and other critical assets.
- Develop and optimize preventive and predictive maintenance programs based on equipment criticality, failure modes, operating conditions, and historical performance.
- Utilize condition-monitoring technologies such as vibration analysis, oil analysis, thermography, ultrasonic inspection, and other predictive maintenance techniques.
- Analyze equipment failure data, downtime, maintenance costs, and operational performance to identify reliability improvement opportunities.
- Review equipment history and maintenance records within the CMMS to identify trends and opportunities for improvement.
- Monitor key reliability and maintenance KPIs, including Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF), Mean Time to Repair (MTTR), equipment availability, maintenance compliance, and unplanned downtime.
- Lead Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) activities for recurring or high-impact equipment failures.
- Identify bad actors and chronic equipment problems and develop corrective action plans to eliminate repeat failures.
- Support maintenance planning, shutdowns, turnarounds, and major equipment overhauls from a reliability perspective.
- Partner with Maintenance and Operations teams to improve equipment reliability and ensure effective execution of reliability initiatives.
- Promote reliability-centered maintenance (RCM), condition-based maintenance, and continuous improvement practices across the operation.
- Provide technical guidance and mentoring to maintenance and operations personnel on reliability best practices.
- Assist other departments with fixed plant maintenance, such as backfill batch plants, as needed.
The above duties and responsibilities represent the nature and level of work assigned and are not necessarily all-inclusive.
Education and Experience
- Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Reliability Engineering, or a related engineering discipline. Equivalent industry experience will be considered.
- Reliability certifications such as Certified Reliability Engineer (CRE), Certified Maintenance & Reliability Professional (CMRP), or equivalent are preferred.
- 5+ years of engineering, maintenance, or reliability experience, preferably within mining, minerals processing, heavy industry, metals, aggregates, or another asset-intensive environment.
- Demonstrated experience improving reliability and availability of heavy industrial or mining equipment.
- Experience conducting RCA, FMEA, criticality assessments, and/or RCM studies.
- Strong understanding of preventive, predictive, and condition-based maintenance methodologies.
- Experience working with CMMS/EAM systems such as SAP, IBM Maximo, or similar platforms.
- Experience analyzing maintenance and equipment performance data to identify trends and drive corrective actions.
- Working knowledge of mechanical and/or electrical equipment commonly found in mineral processing plants, such as crushing, grinding, pumping, leaching, and thermal processing systems.
- Experience working directly with maintenance and operations teams in a field or plant environment.
- Understanding of maintenance planning, spare-parts strategy, equipment lifecycle management, and maintenance optimization.
- Experience with reliability and condition-monitoring tools and techniques is highly desirable.
- Experience with plant restarts, brownfield refurbishment, or new equipment commissioning and operational readiness is preferred.
- Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional improvement initiatives and translate engineering analysis into practical field solutions.
- Proficiency in Microsoft Office (particularly Excel, Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint). Experience with Microsoft Project or Primavera is beneficial.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills in English, with the ability to communicate clearly and professionally with personnel at all levels.
Equal Employment Opportunity
The Company is an equal employment opportunity employer committed to providing employment opportunities to employees and applicants in accordance with all applicable laws.