Who should apply

Qualified electricians who are strongest at fault-finding. If you’ve spent your time chasing faults — service and breakdown work, light industrial, commercial or production maintenance — and you enjoy the puzzle of finding the actual cause rather than swapping parts until something works, this is your role.

You’ll need a Certificate III in Electrotechnology (Electrician) or equivalent, the right to work in Australia, solid mechanical aptitude, and some pneumatic or hydraulic exposure. Experience on food or production equipment is a bonus, not a requirement.

Who shouldn’t apply

Electricians who’ve mainly done current installation work and want to keep doing it — installation here is contracted out. If you need someone standing over you to set your priorities, or you’d rather call a contractor than open the panel and work the problem, we’re not the right fit.

This is also a hands-on role in a food factory: warm drying rooms, cold rooms, strict hygiene, and the occasional urgent call-out. If that doesn’t appeal, better to know now.

Why join Barbell Foods

We make no bullsh#t meat snacks for people who care about their health. You’d join a small maintenance team in a purpose-built factory in Hume — hands-on from day one, with real ownership over the equipment that keeps production running.

The Role

As part of our maintenance team, you will take ownership of breakdowns across all sites – drying rooms, vacuum tumbler, mixers and mincers, sausage fillers, slicers, packaging and thermoforming machines, plus compressed air, refrigeration and materials handling. Electrical fault-finding is the core of the job, but the role is deliberately multi-skilled: pneumatics, hydraulics and mechanical repairs come with it.





You’ll report to the Maintenance Planner. No direct reports, though you’ll coach our Trade Assistant and pass on what you know.

Our preventive maintenance program is being built out in Upkeep right now. You’ll help shape it — PM schedules, work orders and machine-specific procedures. Refrigeration fault-finding is a capability we want you to build here alongside our contractors; we don’t expect it on day one.

Working Hours

- You will mainly be working Monday - Friday, starting around 9 am

- The role includes a rostered on-call week on a rotating basis with the rest of the maintenance team, paid as a weekly on-call allowance.

- Occasionally, we may need to plan you in for an evening shift.

Key Responsibilities

- Lead breakdown diagnosis and repair across production and facility equipment

- Fault-find electrical systems — switchboards, control panels, motors, VFDs, sensors and safety circuits

- Maintain and troubleshoot pneumatic and hydraulic systems, including the site air compressors

- Carry out mechanical fault-finding and repairs — bearings, drives, seals and wear components

- Monitor drying room and cold storage refrigeration, and build fault-finding capability alongside our contractors

- Build and refine PM schedules in Upkeep, and log all work as work orders

- Perform or coordinate test and tag,



RCD testing and routine electrical compliance checks

- Coach the Trade Assistant, and work with Production and Quality to schedule maintenance around the production plan

Skills

- Fault-finding — you work systematically from symptom to root cause instead of guessing

- Drawing interpretations — you can read and work from electrical schematics and mechanical drawings

- Multi-trade hands — electrical first, but comfortable on the mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic side

- Prioritisation — you can judge what gets fixed now and what waits, with a line under pressure

- Communication — you tell Production what’s actually wrong and when they’ll get their machine back

How you’re wired

- Safety-first — isolation and lock-out aren’t paperwork to you, they’re habit

- Curious — an intermittent fault bothers you until you understand it

- Self-directed — you can pick up the day’s priorities and run with them

- Straight-talking — you flag problems early rather than hoping they go away

- Willing to learn — new machines, new systems, refrigeration; you’re up for it

As part of your application, please answer three questions

No cover letter needed — these questions replace it.

1. Tell us about the hardest electrical fault you’ve tracked down. What was the symptom, how did you work through it, and what turned out to be the actual cause?

2. A production machine trips intermittently — a few times a shift, never while you’re standing in front of it, and Production needs it running today. Walk us through exactly what you’d do.

3. What do most maintenance electricians get wrong, and how do you work differently?

📌 Maintenance Electrician — Food Manufacturing (Hume)
🏢 Barbell Foods
📍 Hume