The company
Passionate, curious, and innovative are a few words that describe our people. We are powering the future, connecting communities, and igniting innovation. Orion owns and operates the electricity distribution network that provides power to central Canterbury. As the third largest electricity distribution network in New Zealand, we cover remote rural areas, regional towns, and the city of Christchurch.
We are an essential service and take our responsibilities seriously. We are community owned and working here means a career with meaning and purpose that makes a difference in your very own neighbourhood.
The role
This is a unique opportunity to shape a newly created role and make a genuine impact across the business. Sitting within our Network Assets team, you'll bring a reliability engineering mindset to complex infrastructure, helping guide asset performance, risk, maintenance, and investment and intervention decisions to deliver value for our customers.
We're open to people from a range of asset-intensive industries, whether your background is in mechanical engineering, aviation, utilities or other complex operational environments. What matters most is your ability to apply strong reliability engineering principles, analyse performance and risk and provide practical, evidence-based recommendations that support optimised maintenance, intervention and investment decisions.
Analyse asset health, maintenance, and performance data to identify reliability trends, emerging risks, and improvements to optimise performance and lifecycle outcomes
Apply reliability-centred maintenance principles to assess failure modes, consequences and intervention options, supporting economically optimised maintenance and asset strategies
Work closely with technical, operational and leadership teams to develop reliability frameworks and translate analysis into practical, value-focused recommendations that influence lifecycle and investment decisions
Support long-term asset strategies, intervention planning, and risk-based decision-making across the asset lifecycle
Provide practical technical advice on reliability, asset performance and maintenance approaches, balancing performance, risk and cost considerations
Review operational outcomes, incidents, and performance trends to drive continuous improvement, including root cause analysis, identification of systemic issues, and refinement of maintenance and intervention strategies
About you
A relevant qualification or equivalent practical experience in mechanical, industrial, aerospace or similar with exposure to asset-intensive or operational environments
Background in reliability, maintenance, asset performance, or risk engineering within complex infrastructure or operational setting
Strong analytical and problem-solving capability, with experience interpreting performance, condition, and operational data to inform practical decision-making
Assess complex information and communicate technical findings in a clear, practical and meaningful way, supporting informed asset and investment decisions
Strong stakeholder engagement and relationship management skills with the ability to work effectively across technical and operational teams
A proactive mindset with a strong focus on continuous improvement, collaboration and long-term asset performance and value outcomes
What they offer
You'll find at Orion, you can come as you are and just be you. You will be joining a workplace that values who you are, the work you do, and the way you think.
Importantly, we offer:
Flexible working arrangements, and flexible locations with our Head office in Burnside and satellite offices in Rolleston and Ferrymead
Three days of “My Days” leave
A broad range of workplace benefits from a wellbeing allowance to access to our holiday house in Hanmer!