Quality & Food Safety Manager

The Role

We are hiring an on-site Quality & Food Safety Manager to be Client's eyes and authority at a co-packing facility during Client's production. You will be the senior quality voice on the floor - verifying food safety practices, confirming product quality against spec, observing operations and throughput, and more. You will have hold and release authority on client finished goods.

The plant runs six days a week, up to 20 hours a day. Your visits will be variable in timing - early shift, late shift, weekends - to ensure observations across all production conditions. This is a floor presence role for someone who has done quality the right way at a real manufacturing site and is comfortable enforcing standards.

What You'll Do

• Verify food safety on the floor. Be present during production to confirm that food safety programs are being executed as designed - not just documented as designed. This includes pre-operational verification, allergen changeover and line clearance, CCP monitoring, environmental monitoring, sanitation, and GMP compliance.
• Verify product quality against spec. Confirm that finished Client product meets every parameter on our specifications - weight, overrun, wrapper integrity, lot coding, pack-out, and pallet build. Pull samples for third-party lab testing and ensure cold chain integrity through to the lab. Make hold-or-release decisions on Client finished goods.
• Audit operations and throughput. Watch how the plant actually runs. Track production rates against target, monitor yield and ingredient loss, and observe staffing, training, schedule adherence, and equipment performance. Flag operational issues that put quality, food safety, or delivery commitments at risk.
• Report directly to Client leadership. Send a daily summary at the end of each production day and a weekly written report covering open issues, trends, and corrective actions. Audit recordkeeping for completeness - pre-op logs, allergen and CCP records, COAs, training, EMP, pest control. Own the corrective action tracker and drive open items to closure.

What You Bring

Required:

• Ability to be onsite at our co-packing facility in Kennett Square, PA on a variable schedule including early shifts, evening shifts, and Saturdays
• Comfort operating with authority inside a plant where you are not the employer

Strongly preferred:

• 5+ years of food manufacturing quality experience, with demonstrated time in a Quality Manager or equivalent role
• PCQI certification
• SQF Practitioner certification
• HACCP team experience
• Demonstrated experience holding or rejecting product against specification
• Strong working knowledge of FSMA, FDCA, and SQF Edition 9 requirements
• Experience in dairy, frozen, or other temperature-controlled food manufacturing
• Experience in co-packer, 3PL, or contract manufacturing oversight
• Experience meeting customer or retailer quality requirements

Engagement

This is a full-time salaried position with benefits. The role is at least 40 hours per week onsite at our co-packing facility in Kennett Square, PA, on a variable schedule including early shifts, evening shifts, and occasional weekends. Compensation is competitive and commensurate with experience.

Start date is immediate.