Strip, inspect, repair and rebuild hydraulic components on your own bench. Cylinders, pumps, motors, valves. You get the job, you find the fault, you fix it, you write up what you found.
Who we are
Mackay Fluid Power keeps industry moving by solving hydraulic problems properly. Mines, tunnels, ports, manufacturing. Workshops at Smithfield, Mudgee and Paget.
We diagnose before we replace. If a pump comes in and the fault hasn’t been found, it doesn’t go out – near enough isn’t good enough here, and nobody will ask you to sign off on something you’re not happy with.
Small teams. In Mackay you’d be one of a handful at Paget; You’d know everyone by name in a fortnight, and your opinion on a job would be the one that counts.
What you’d actually do
- Strip, clean, measure and inspect components. Report what you found and what caused it.
- Rebuild and test cylinders, pumps, motors and valves to spec.
- Assembly and kit work for our mine contracts – build to a parts list, to a lead time.
- Keep your own job records accurate in AroFlo. Hours, parts, findings.
- Keep the count honest on the stock you use. If it comes off the shelf and it isn’t recorded, it costs us a delivery.
- Keep your bench and the workshop in a state you’d be happy to walk a customer through.
- Work alongside the apprentice and trade assistant on your site – showing them, not supervising them.
Some of it is repetitive. Kit and assembly work is a steady part of the week alongside the repair work, and it goes to a customer who measures whether we delivered on time.
What you’d need
On day one
- A completed mechanical trade – fitter and turner, mechanical fitter, diesel fitter, plant mechanic, boilermaker, heavy vehicle. Which trade matters less than that you finished one.
- The mechanical aptitude to work out why something failed, not just what failed.
- Comfortable measuring accurately and working to tolerance.
- Driver’s licence.
- Australian working rights. These roles are not sponsored.
Would help
- Hydraulics experience – cylinders, pumps, motors, valve blocks.
- Machining, honing or chrome work.
- Mining, heavy earthmoving or industrial maintenance background.
- Having used a job management system before.
We’ll teach you
- Hydraulics, properly and formally – see below.
- Our test procedures, our documentation, our customers’ equipment.
If you’ve never touched a hydraulic cylinder but you’re a strong tradesperson, apply. We would rather teach hydraulics to someone who can diagnose than teach diagnosis to someone who knows hydraulics.
The pay, and the qualification
$47 to $60 an hour, plus 12% superannuation. Where you land in that range depends on your trade, your experience and what you can already do on a bench. We’ll be specific about it at interview, not vague.
Full time, 40 hours a week, Monday to Friday. Covered by the Manufacturing and Associated Industries and Occupations Award 2020. Approved additional hours are paid on top.
MEM40119 Certificate IV in Engineering (Fluid Power) – fully funded, and your rate goes up when you finish it.
This is the part worth reading twice. APT Training is part of our group – we own the registered training organisation that delivers fluid power qualifications. So this isn’t a training budget you have to argue for each year. It’s a nationally recognised qualification, delivered in-house, paid for by us, with a pay increase attached to completing it.
There are not many hydraulic workshops in Australia that can put that in writing.
Where it goes from here
Two paths out of this seat, and both are real. Field Service Technician – out with customers, on site, diagnosing in the field. Or Workshop Lead Technician – running the bench, the workload and the standard. Both our current lead technicians came up this way.
Workshop tools and test equipment provided, along with uniforms and PPE.
What’s hard about it
We’d rather you knew now than found out in month three.
- The teams are small. When someone’s away, it’s felt. You’d need to be reliable in a way you might not have to be somewhere with forty fitters.
- We’re mid-fix. New structure, new systems, a fair bit of it recent. Some things are still rough. You’d be joining a business that’s fixing itself rather than one that’s finished.
- Some weeks are kit and assembly. It’s not all interesting failure diagnosis. The contract work pays for the workshop and it has to go out on time.
- The paperwork matters here. Job records, findings, stock. If recording what you did feels like an imposition, this will grate.
How to apply
Send a CV and Tell us about one job you’re proud of: what came in, what you found, what you did about it. That tells us more than a list of employers.
We’ll come back to everyone either way, inside a week.
Save as PDF