Fitter / Machinist / Line Borer

Are you a machinist who's sick of churning out the same part a thousand times over? Or fixing the same plant for what seems like an eternity? Do you want a job where no two weeks look the same and your trade actually gets used?

If that's you, keep reading.

Metro Machining is a Melbourne engineering shop — manual machining, line boring, fitting and fabrication — based in Campbellfield, with a second branch down in Gippsland. We do real work for serious customers: mining, civil, industrial, food processing, general manufacturing. The jobs where the plant's down, the part has to be spot-on first time, and the customer is waiting on us to get them running again.

Why you'll want this job

• Proper variety. Manual lathes, horizontal borers and mills, one-offs and small batches — you won't be making the same part until you're bored stupid.
• Line boring is where the best work is — our highest-value game, and most of our machinists are qualified on it. Want to get into it? We'll get you there. It's the clearest way to grow your trade with us.
• Welding and fabrication experience is highly advantageous — and you'll likely be upskilled into it anyway.
• You'll be told what good looks like, then left to get on with it. We back our tradies.

The real deal — this is field work

Let's be straight about what this job is, because the right person will read this and grin. Our work happens where the broken machines are: mine sites, gas fields, logging coups in the high country, power stations — sites that are hot, dusty, muddy or a long way from a coffee machine. When a customer's plant is down, we answer — that means overtime when the job demands it, weekend shifts, and stints working away.

Here's the other side of that coin:

• The money follows the work. Site rate on top of your base, overtime on top of that — the big weeks are where our machinists do seriously well.
• The jobs are the stories you'll tell for years. Our crew has machined a bucket wheel the size of a building, restored the engine that powers an island nation, and run a 124-bore program in the Moomba desert. That work doesn't happen between 7 and 3:30 in a tidy workshop.
• Freedom, trust and autonomy. Once you've proven yourself, you'll run your own jobs solo — your truck, your site, your call. Fully kitted trucks, proper planning behind you, and the workshop only ever a phone call away. No one standing over your shoulder — we hire tradesmen we can trust and then we trust them.

If you want your weekends guaranteed quiet, this isn't your job. If you want your trade tested on real machines in real places — and to be paid like it — it absolutely is.

Pay — where you start isn't where you stay

The advertised $36–$40/hr + $6/hr site rate is the entry-level range — that's for a solid fitter/machinist coming in with no line boring experience while we train you up. Experienced mobile line borers earn significantly more — if you can already run on-site bore jobs on your own, tell us your number and your track record and we'll have a straight conversation. Everything's negotiable.

You'd report to Damian, our Ops Manager. Metro's owned by Pat O'Hara and Karl Hansen, who are hands-on in the business — in the trenches with the boys.