Reporting to the Director of Food Safety for Manufacturing, this role leads site food safety and quality programs for high-risk manufacturing operations. The position is responsible for maintaining regulatory, customer, and certification compliance; leading food safety plans and prerequisite programs; and partnering across operations, sanitation, maintenance, supply chain, and product development to ensure safe, legal, and high-quality products. This role serves as the primary site contact for inspections and audits and drives continuous improvement through effective quality systems, technical leadership, and risk-based decision making.
Onsite position with Monday-Friday 8am-5pm schedule. On call as needed. Occasional travel.
What You'll Be Doing:
- Lead and continuously improve the site food safety and quality management system, including food safety plans, prerequisite programs, sanitation controls, environmental monitoring, document control, and records management.
- Ensure compliance with applicable regulatory, customer, and third-party requirements; serve as the primary site contact for inspections, audits, corrective actions, and follow-up activities.
- Primary point of contact for regulatory inspections and provide guidance to site leadership regarding implementation of regulatory compliance.
- Oversee product and material compliance activities, including specifications, labeling, packaging verification, process controls, testing, calibration, and disposition of nonconforming product.
- Provide technical leadership for manufacturing operations, including verification of critical controls, sanitation and hygienic design programs, traceability, recall readiness, complaint investigations, and continuous improvement initiatives.
- Support product launches, process changes, shelf-life and validation activities, and risk-based quality decisions across multiple product categories and manufacturing systems.
- Lead internal audits, root cause analysis, CAPA, KPI reporting, site training, and cross-functional collaboration to strengthen food safety culture and operational performance.
- Provide oversight for laboratory or external testing support, microbiological risk management, and specialized process controls relevant to the site's operations.
- This job profile is not meant to be all inclusive of the responsibilities of this position; may perform other duties as assigned or required
What You Bring with You (Qualifications):
- Bachelor's degree in Food Science, Dairy Science, Microbiology, Biology, Chemistry, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
- 5+ years of quality leadership experience in dairy manufacturing environment required
- Progressive experience in food safety and quality within a manufacturing environment; experience in dairy required.
- Strong knowledge of food safety plans, GMPs, sanitation systems, environmental monitoring, allergen controls, audit readiness, and quality management practices.
- Experience leading investigations, internal audits, CAPA, complaint management, traceability, recall readiness, and risk-based product disposition decisions.
- Experience in UHT, Aseptic or ESL (some combination of experience in 2 of 3) required
- Willing to consider conventional fluid dairy experience
- Demonstrated leadership of cross-functional teams, technical communication, data analysis, and the ability to influence operational performance.
- Experience with regulated manufacturing environments, certification programs, laboratory oversight, and specialized process controls relevant to the facility preferred.
- Pasteurized Milk Ordinance experience.
- HACCP, PCQI, SQF, certifications required.
