Quality Lead

The Client :

Our client is a multinational food manufacturing business that provides fresh, short shelf-life, and high-risk products, ensuring that no two days will be the same at their Auckland based site just south of the Manukau City Centre.

The Role :

In this challenging and hands-on role, you will act as a 2IC for the Quality and Technical Manager to support, lead, and mentor 4 direct reports within the quality team. The role will be responsible for providing quality and technical expertise, ensuring products remain safe and compliant by maintaining the food safety programme, and retaining excellent ratings and standards for customer specific audits. Tasks will include but are not limited to :

• Raw material assessments
• Leading internal and external audits
• Ensuring non-conformance register is maintained
• Driving continuous improvement
• Coordinating external product testing and pest control
• Actively working with production to troubleshoot quality issues
• Ensuring prerequisite programmes are maintained, adhered to, and updated as required
• Supporting the QA Manager and / or Food Quality Technologists duties as required
• Creating and updating SOPs
• Providing regulatory advice
• Maintaining working knowledge of NZ and international food safety legislation

Please note – This is a Monday to Friday role, but there must be some flexibility to have presence with the night shift team. The role is not primarily an office-based role and requires someone who is keen to be hands-on in their work and is comfortable working in a chilled environment.

You, the Candidate :

Your passion for quality and influencing skills will see you drive the site’s quality culture forward. As such, your customer focus, strong communication, and interpersonal skills will be equally as important as your quality and compliance knowledge. The ideal candidate will possess the following skills and attributes :

• Tertiary science qualification with a major in food science, microbiology, chemistry or similar
• A minimum of 4 years’ experience in all aspects of quality assurance within a food manufacturing environment
• Knowledge of NZ and international food legislation
• Experience leading internal and external audits
• Advanced HACCP, WQA, BRC, SQF knowledge and more
• Ability to effectively communicate with internal and external customers
• Capable of working in high-pressure situations and remain solutions focused
• Hold sound computer skills and the ability to convert data into useful user-friendly information