Senior Shift Process Technician - Oakthorpe Dairy

Senior Shift Process Technician, Arla – Oakthorpe Dairy (N13 6BU)

12 hour days and night shifts.

Are you ready to take on a senior engineering role at one of Arla’s flagship dairies?

We’re looking for a talented Senior Shift Process Technician to join our team at Oakthorpe Dairy, where you’ll work with state‑of‑the‑art equipment and play a key role in keeping one of our most advanced sites running at its best. This is an opportunity to grow your career, take ownership of critical engineering activity, and contribute directly to Arla’s continued success.

“You’ll be joining a fast‑paced, highly skilled engineering team where no two days are the same — and where your expertise will make a real difference,” says the Oakthorpe Engineering Leadership Team.

How you will make an impact

As a Senior Shift Process Technician, you’ll provide essential support across the site, responding to breakdowns, delivering planned preventative maintenance, and ensuring our automated processing and packaging equipment operates safely and efficiently. Alongside your day‑to‑day responsibilities, you’ll contribute to continuous improvement initiatives and support project work that drives long‑term site performance.

Your key responsibilities will include:

• Providing critical breakdown support and delivering planned preventative maintenance across processing
• Ensuring safe, efficient operation of machinery including pasteurisers, homogenisers, separators, valves, and instrumentation
• Providing technical support to colleagues
• Supporting CI initiatives and engineering projects to improve reliability and performance
• Collaborating with colleagues across engineering and production to maintain a safe, compliant and high‑performing environment

This role sits within the Engineering team at Arla’s Oakthorpe Dairy.

What will make you successful?

You’ll bring strong mechanical and electrical engineering experience from a fast‑paced manufacturing environment, ideally within food, FMCG or process industries. You’ll be confident working with complex machinery, proactive in your approach, and motivated by solving problems and improving performance. We work closely together at Oakthorpe and pride ourselves on a collaborative, supportive culture — you’ll join a team that values knowledge‑sharing, continuous improvement and technical excellence.

To succeed in this role, you will have completed a time‑served apprenticeship, hold an NVQ Level 3, or bring equivalent experience gained in a fast‑paced manufacturing environment. You’ll have strong experience as a multiskilled engineer — whether as a shift engineer, maintenance engineer or engineering technician — with a solid background in both mechanical and electrical engineering across manufacturing, production or process settings. Ideally, you will also have experience working with fast‑moving machinery, pumps, valves, hydraulics, pneumatics, three‑phase motors, variable speed drives, inverter drives, sensors, relays, Siemens PLCs, site services such as steam, chilled water and compressors, as well as CIP systems. Strong computer literacy is also important, including familiarity with SAP, Microsoft Office, SCADA, Trend systems and HMIs.

What do we offer?

We’re committed to your growth and development, offering internal and external training opportunities. You’ll enjoy a competitive salary, 26 days holiday, matched pension contributions up to 6%, life assurance, and flexible benefits. At Oakthorpe, you’ll join a team proud of its high job satisfaction and steep learning curve, with plenty of challenges and support to help you succeed.

Things we’d love to tell you about Arla

We are a farmer‑owned cooperative, committed to ensuring farmers receive a fair price for their milk. We’ve even experimented with poo‑powered trucks — and built the world’s first 100% carbon‑neutral dairy — as part of our ongoing commitment to tackling climate change. We produce Lurpak, one of the world’s most iconic butter brands, and we are a Danish‑owned global business operating across the UK, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, North America, South America and beyond.

Would you like to join us?

If you want to make an impact and help shape the future of dairy, apply as soon as possible. We process applications on a continuous basis and will close recruitment once the right candidate is found.

For additional information, please contact Chris Wakefield at [email protected]

Shape the Future of Dairy 

Arla is a global leader in the dairy industry, committed to enabling good food choices that make life better, providing people with natural, sustainable nourishment, while taking care at every step to ensure Arla is a choice they can feel good about. If you are looking to shape the future with an ambitious global cooperative that truly cares about your growth, where everyone feels valued and empowered, and collaboration is the core of culture, Arla is a choice you can feel good about. 

 
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