Sr. Food Safety & Quality Assurance Manager

Position Purpose:

The Sr. Manager of Food Safety is responsible for leading, managing, and executing the day to day operations of Food Safety & Quality Assurance at all SCF facilities. This position reports to the Vice President, Food Safety and Quality Assurance.

Summary of Responsibilities:

The Sr. Manager of Food Safety and Quality Assurance will be responsible for leading the Food Safety, Quality Assurance, and Sanitation efforts for Sandridge, Medina. Responsibilities will include assuring all facility policies, procedures and practices adhere to USDA and FDA Regulations, SQFI requirements, and Good Manufacturing Practices while meeting customer requirements. The position will ensure our company achieves customer expectations and provides for continuous process improvement. This position will be the primary liaison between our company and USDA, FDA, ODA, customers, and auditors. This position will lead cross-functional teams in the root cause analysis and corrective action of food safety issues.

This person shall exemplify the Sandridge Core Values at all times (Ethics/Integrity, Caring Employee Environment, Always Improving, Responsive Customer Service, Excellence in Reputation).

Key Specific Responsibilities:

• Develop and lead implementation of programs complying with SQF, USDA/FSIS & FDA Regulations and as applicable to the production of Ready-to-Eat Fresh Salads and Soups (HACCP, HARPC, SSOP, & Pre-requisite Programs). Assures they are understood, routinely assessed, continually improved upon, and well maintained.
• Formulates and maintains Food Safety and Quality objectives for facility and site FSQA team, aligns and coordinates objectives with company objectives in conjunction with the VP, Food Safety and Quality.
• Monitors Quality KPIs (i.e. Customer Complaints, FTQs, Food Safety incidents, etc.), reacting to trends or emerging issues that would negatively affect performance by engaging the appropriate functions and process owners (i.e. operations, maintenance, Innovation)
• Lead the development of sanitary design and operating practices. Provide sanitary design recommendations for new and existing equipment and modifications and /or installations of existing/new equipment.
• Provide oversight and leadership of facility Quality Assurance team. Responsible for hiring and team member development.
• Manages the FSQA Training Coordinator role, responsibilities, and projects for food safety training, development, and delivery (SQF, Sanitation, Microbiology, Pest Control, Allergen Management, HARPC, HACCP, GMPs, SOPs, and Internal Auditing.
• Maintain and continuously improve existing validation programs for CCPs, Preventive controls, Sanitation.
• Responsible for developing, monitoring, and the on-going management of the FSQA Sanitation budgets.
• Maintain (including paper and electronic) records of monitoring to verify that processes and products continuously meet program and policy requirements. Analyze data collected using quality tools to identify trends, potential issues and opportunities for improvement.
• Develops and analyzes statistical data and product specifications to determine present standards and establish proposed quality and reliability expectancy of finished product that meets and complies with all regulatory requirements. Utilizes these data for continuous quality improvement where appropriate.
• Implement processes of record review, process verification and validation, facility inspection and others to ensure the facility is always prepared for internal, external and regulatory audits
• Validate effective process controls and prerequisite programs and coordinate Mock Recall and Food Defense assessments.
• Create and enforce robust testing programs on food products to ensure compliance with regulations, and the advancement of product safety for our consumers.
• Provide leadership for technical problem solving and root cause analysis by using cross-functional teams when issues are across functional areas (QA, Operations, Innovation, and Sanitation).

Summary of Authority Granted To This Position:

The person in this role will work directly with appropriate SFC employees and management regarding all production issues relative to food safety and quality, as directed by the Vice President of Food Safety and Quality. Perform required activities in the absence of the Vice President of Food Safety and Quality.

Position Competencies

• Strong demonstrated transformational skills (inspiring, problem solving, communication across multiple organizations, executing) to provide evidence-based leadership, and the ability to utilize these skills with all levels of team members and management is required.
• Experience building, leading, and developing high-performance FSQA teams.
• Strong comprehension of food industry quality systems and FDA / USDA regulations, with previous experience successfully developing and managing a quality assurance and food safety program
• Exceptional interpersonal skills and organizational skills, with impeccable attention to detail, and strong professional written and verbal communication skills
• Ability to communicate clearly with all levels of co-workers and management to express complex ideas and situations concisely in written, verbal and electronic modes
• Must be able to perform multiple tasks simultaneously and accurately and adjust rapidly to shifting priorities and variable workloads
• Technical knowledge of COP and CIP, cleaning and sanitizing chemicals, sanitary design of food processing equipment, & internal auditing of food manufacturing facilities.
• Ability to work collaboratively as part of a team to achieve company goals
• Excellent PC skills including working knowledge of MS Word and PowerPoint along with proficiency with MS Excel is needed

Measurements of Performance:

• Food Safety key performance indicators such as: Food Safety Customer Complaints, Environmental Test results, and SQF audit results will be used to measure performance.