Shift Maintenance Engineer

About the role

Tata Steel's Port Talbot works is the largest integrated steel-production site in the UK, employing several thousand people and producing millions of tonnes of steel a year for the automotive, construction and packaging sectors. The site is currently undergoing the largest industrial transition in its history — a multi-billion-pound investment to replace the legacy primary steelmaking route with an electric arc furnace, decarbonising UK primary steel production. This Shift Maintenance Engineer role sits within the hot strip mill — the asset that takes hot slab from upstream and rolls it down to coil for downstream customers. The mill runs 24/7 on a continental pattern, and the shift team is the first responder for any line stoppage, with first-line fix or escalation responsibility on hydraulic, electrical and PLC systems. The engineering culture at Port Talbot is high-pressure and high-skill — line stoppages on a hot strip mill cost the business heavily per hour, and the shift engineer is the person who gets the line running again. You'll work across systems that handle multi-tonne hot slab at temperatures well above 1,000°C, with safety and speed as joint priorities at every decision point. Standard package includes a defined-contribution pension scheme with strong employer match, shift premium on top of base salary, life assurance, generous holiday entitlement, on-site occupational health, and access to one of the UK's leading metallurgical and heavy-process engineering CPD pathways.

Responsibilities

• Lead reactive engineering response on the hot strip mill during shift hours
• Fault-find and repair hydraulic systems on roll stands, edger units, side guides and coilers
• Maintain electrical drives (Siemens Simatic, ABB ACS) and PLC systems (S7-300 / S7-1500)
• Support planned shutdowns and major outages on roll changes and mill-upgrade work
• Diagnose mechanical issues on bearings, gearboxes and drive trains under load
• Coordinate with operations and process metallurgy on root-cause findings post-incident
• Lead shift maintenance briefings and structured handover with the incoming shift engineer
• Mentor and supervise mechanical and electrical technicians during shift coverage

Requirements

• Time-served multi-skilled engineer (electrical and mechanical bias)
• Heavy-process or hot-mill experience (steel, foundry, large-scale process plant)
• Confident on Siemens S7 PLC fault-finding and modern AC drives
• Hydraulics fault-finding — proportional valves, accumulators, high-pressure systems
• Comfortable on 4-on / 4-off continental shift including nights
• 18th Edition Wiring Regulations
• Right to work in the UK; pre-employment medical including hearing and grip-strength assessment