Senior Adviser Engineering - Functional Safety & Reliability

About the role

The Senior Adviser Engineering provides technical leadership in reliability engineering, asset integrity, functional safety and risk management across the Fixed Plant operation. The role ensures that critical assets and safety systems perform as designed, supporting safe, reliable and sustainable plant operations, and draws on best practice from Rio Tinto Iron Ore environments. It plays a key part in setting operational standards, control effectiveness and engineering governance during the ramp-up of Simandou operations.

Key responsibilities

• Lead reliability improvement initiatives, develop and optimise maintenance strategies, run root cause analysis and defect elimination programmes, and drive availability, MTBF, MTTR, OEE and maintenance compliance.
• Custodian of the site Functional Safety Management System: ensure compliance with the Rio Tinto Functional Safety Standard, maintain governance of SIS, Safety PLCs, ESD, fire and gas and machine protection systems, and lead periodic audits and Functional Safety Assessments.
• Review HAZOP, LOPA, Bowtie, SIL determinations and risk assessments; verify critical controls and support investigations into critical control failures.
• Manage the functional safety lifecycle from concept to decommissioning, including Safety Requirement Specifications, Management of Change and proof testing.
• Develop strategies for sustaining the integrity of safety-critical assets and continuous improvement from failure analysis.
• Build functional safety capability across engineering, maintenance and operations teams through training and mentoring.

Required profile

• Degree in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical, Mechatronics, Process Control or equivalent.
• TÜV Functional Safety Engineer/Professional, Exida Functional Safety Practitioner and Certified Risk Management or Process Safety qualification.
• 10+ years' experience in mining, minerals processing, oil and gas or similar high-hazard environments, with extensive experience in asset management, functional safety lifecycle management, process safety or control systems engineering.
• Demonstrated experience within Rio Tinto Iron Ore.
• English speaker; French is advantageous.

What we offer

• Competitive base salary and annual cash incentives for eligible employees.
• Career development, training assistance and family-friendly health programs.
• Retirement and savings plans, wellness benefits and an Employee Assistance Program.
• Employee stock ownership plan and comprehensive leave policy.