Sr. Specialist Maintenance Planner Scheduler
About this opportunity
Step into a role where your expertise keeps life-changing therapies moving forward. As a Senior Specialist Maintenance Planner Scheduler, you will be at the heart of a cutting-edge biopharmaceutical site, ensuring critical equipment operates with precision, reliability, and compliance. By aligning maintenance strategy with production needs, you will directly impact the seamless delivery of advanced gene therapy treatments to patients. This is an opportunity to collaborate across teams, drive continuous improvement, and play a vital role in powering innovation that truly changes lives.
Location: This position will be located in Durham, NC and will be an onsite role.Novartis is unable to offer relocation support for this role: please only apply if this location is accessible for you.Key Responsibilities:Plan and schedule maintenance and calibration activities to ensure uninterrupted manufacturing operationsDevelop and maintain equipment records and detailed maintenance plans aligned with production prioritiesProvide technical guidance to maintenance and reliability teams to support effective task executionImplement and sustain site maintenance programs ensuring compliance and consistent equipment performanceCoordinate maintenance work by defining scope, estimating resources, and ensuring timely executionCollaborate with production, operations, and service partners to align maintenance with business needsAnalyze work orders based on urgency, complexity, and resource availability to optimize workflowAssign and sequence work orders to maximize efficiency of maintenance teams and resourcesManage external contractors and subcontractors supporting maintenance and project-based activitiesTrack and report maintenance performance metrics to drive productivity and continuous improvementEssential Requirements:Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field with at least five years of pharmaceutical manufacturing experience or nine years of equivalent experience in lieu of a degreeBroad technical knowledge across disciplines including power transmission, lubrication, and electrical control systemsExperience maintaining biopharmaceutical equipment such as bioreactors, filtration systems, and clean room air systemsWorking knowledge of computerized maintenance management systems and materials management processesProven ability to develop and manage preventive and predictive maintenance programs for manufacturing equipmentUnderstanding of reliability centered maintenance principles and their practical application in manufacturing environmentsExperience performing root cause failure analysis and implementing improvements to enhance equipment performanceProficiency in Microsoft Office applications and other relevant software toolsNovartis Compensation and Benefit Summary:The salary for this position is expected to range between $81,200 and $150,800 annuallyThe final salary offered is determined based on factors like, but not limited to, relevant skills and experience, and upon joining Novartis will be reviewed periodically. Novartis may change the published salary range based on company and market factors.Your compensation will include a performance-based cash incentive and, depending on the level of the role, eligibility to be considered for annual equity awards.US-based eligible employees will receive a comprehensive benefits package that includes health, life and disability benefits, a 401(k) with company contribution and match, and a variety of other benefits. In addition, employees are eligible for a generous time off package including vacation, personal days, holidays and other leaves.#LI-Onsite
Job details
How this role compares
Computed from every other active Facilities & Administration role in our database, not just this employer's listings.
We currently track 10 comparable Senior Facilities & Administration roles across 8 biopharma companies.
Salary context
3 of 10 peers report a salary range (USD, annualized)
Peers share this role's job function and a matching or adjacent seniority level -- not necessarily the same therapeutic area or country.
Where these roles are based
Top locations among the 10 comparable roles
Seniority mix
10 of 10 peers have a known seniority level
Therapeutic area mix
0 of 10 peers have a known therapeutic area; the rest are genuinely unlabeled, not hidden
No peers with a known therapeutic area yet.
Similar opportunities
The closest matches from our peer group, ranked by how similar they are, not how well you'd qualify for them -- treat this as market context, not a guaranteed shortlist; a weak match is labeled as one below.
Open in 2 locations
How we calculate "similar"
No black box, no LLM guesswork: a deterministic score built from four normalized attributes. Here's this role's own peer group at different match levels, so you can see the mechanism, not just the result.
Every comparison starts from the same 100-point budget: 25 for working in the same function, 40 for the same therapeutic area, 20 for the same or adjacent seniority, 15 for the same country. A dimension we can't confirm on both sides contributes nothing, never a guess, never a free pass.
0 points, never a partial guess. A role we know almost nothing about beyond its function bottoms out at 25%; it never inflates to 100% just because there's little to compare against. Seniority uses a defined ladder (Associate → Manager → Associate Director → Senior → Principal → Director → Senior Director → Executive/VP) so "Director" and "Senior Director" count as adjacent, but "Director" and "Executive/VP" do not.