Maintenance Electrician — Food Manufacturing
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 new 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
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, recent systems, refrigeration; you're up for it
#J-*****-Ljbffr

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