Role: Food Safety & Quality Assurance Manager

Viva is a fast-growing, direct-to-consumer fresh pet food company that makes choosing high quality, healthy options for your pet easy. Our food is made with 100% human-grade ingredients in our USDA kitchens—because we believe your fur-child doesn’t deserve any less.

Bootstrapped from Day 1, Viva has grown to serve thousands & thousands of pets across the country, one meal at a time shipped frozen direct-to-door.

At Viva, we don’t make compromises when it comes to our food—and that’s why we’re building a team that MUST be fanatical, obsessed, and determined to provide the absolute best nutrition for our fur family.

Summary:

We’re looking for a full-time Food Safety & Quality Assurance Manager to drive excellence within product quality.

This role is uniquely situated between the internal Viva operational team & our co-manufacturing facility. While the primary focus is ensuring we meet quality objectives & product specifications in the facility, this role will touch all aspects of ‘quality’ within our supply chain. For example, this could include working with our raw material suppliers to test microbiological loads on incoming products or working with distribution warehouses to ensure adherence to our temperature requirements. Most importantly, your job is to both ensure our continuous adherence to all quality standards (FDA, FSMA, GFSI standards) and also preempt what our brand needs at each phase of growth—meaning that you never stop pushing for more rigorous quality controls as our systems scale & become more complex.

It’s important to note that even though we don’t have our own manufacturing facility, we built our entire supply chain from the ground up & are deeply integrated into the production processes & food safety program of our USDA co-manufacturer (for example, we co-own the Food Safety Plan). You won’t just ‘audit’ programs and measure facility adherence, but implement new procedures within our food safety program & push for daily improvement on the production floor.

At the onstart, you will be the FSQA presence for Viva at our co-manufacturing facility and report directly to the Founder. You’ll be in the plant during all production (at least 3 out of 5 weekdays) and will oversee the entire Food Safety Program for producing Viva products. This means that you will write procedures, create forms, and help with training. You will oversee the entire food safety culture, GMP adherence, CAPA process, audits and so much more. You will play a large role in regulatory compliance and will be expected to support all FDA inspections. You will grow to understand the ins & outs of our operation and it’s your job to ensure quality is always integrated into our decision-making when choosing new suppliers, launching new products, and more. Most importantly, you need to be willing to walk the floor and be on your feet for most hours of the day. You don’t hesitate to pick up a bucket and demonstrate how to clean a piece of equipment or show how to foam the drain system in the production room.

It’s important to mention the nuance of producing a raw, RTE product. You deeply understand how imperative it is to have the combination of 1) environmental sanitation, 2) raw material quality, and 3) validated kill steps / interventions to produce a pathogen-free raw product. Not only are you responsible on a day-to-day basis for managing the safety & quality of the product, but you also have to know how to train, teach & influence employee culture to constantly strive for better.

What you’ll do day-to-day:

In the beginning:

Manage our entire food safety program at our USDA co-manufacturing facility from the production floor
Develop & onboard new procedures & forms & sign-off on all PC-related records
Promote risk assessment approach which includes verification, validation, and monitoring of the effectiveness of our food safety plan & food safety procedures
Manage & adhere to project timelines for food safety program updates & all plant improvements related to quality
Lead & champion the food safety culture at our co-manufacturing facility on-site—with an emphasis on educating employees on not only “how” to produce safe RTE raw meat products, but the “why” behind our programs and processes
Manage our environmental testing program, finished product testing program (hold & release) & raw material testing programs (part of our Supplier Approval Program)
Interpret & act on any trending data from our 3rd party laboratory (i.e. if raw material supplier exceeds allowable microbiology limits or environmental indicator testing is trending worse in a particular area of the plant)
Implement corrective actions as needed for CAPA programs & escalated consumer issues. Support the Customer Service team in addressing / de-escalating any consumer issues.
Support all regulatory compliance requirements, including communicating with the State Department of Agriculture or FDA about product labeling or other inspection follow-ups
Support all internal and external audits of the facility

Eventually you will also:

Manage team members to lead FSQA on the production floor on a day-to-day basis. It’s your responsibility to define the most important positions to fill at each stage of our company's growth and you will single handedly be responsible for finding the right individuals and bringing them up to speed
Lead any and all projects related to quality given the phase of the business, such as: onboarding a new intervention / hurdle step, adding a new ingredient to our food, or changing a distribution warehouse
Lead audits of all external partners, including relevant suppliers / warehouses / manufacturers
Most importantly—proactively design our risk mitigation processes that allow us to 2, 3, 5x in size without compromising the quality of food that we’re producing. Your job is to think of all the things that could go wrong and develop processes to prevent them ahead of time

We’re looking for someone who has:

5+ years experience in FSQA in a food/meat manufacturing environment and strong understanding of QA systems (HACCP, cGMP, FDA, USDA, FSMA, GFSI standards) — you MUST currently be working on the production floor
3+ years leading the food safety program as a PCQI within a manufacturing environment including exposure to 3rd party audits & regulatory inspections. This means authoring the procedures & forms, signing off on PC-related documents & leading the CAPA process during non-conformance events.
The soft skills to train, educate & influence employees and change the culture of an organization to focus on quality. You already know the easy part is developing the programs and the harder part is implementation & enforcement. You know what it takes to gain buy-in & to inspire change within an organization.
Killer project management skills & attention to detail. You’re the type of person who doesn’t ‘miss things’ & knows how to get it done. You always have timelines that you’re adhering to and know how to keep others around you on track as well. You’re a natural at juggling a bunch of things while never dropping the ball.
An unwavering focus on quality but also an ability to empathize with operational limitations. It’s been a trope that quality and operations always butt heads but here at Viva, we don’t believe in that. You know how to speak up but it doesn’t mean you are not considerate of other limitations. You’re able to work with other parties to find the best solution for everyone.
Strong analytics & statistics chops—you’re a guru when it comes to interpreting trending quality data and microbiology results. You have no problem building a reporting dashboard to track microbiology performance over time or to show a partner why a particular result is out of conformance.
Proactive mentality even during “peace time” when things are quiet. Just because there are no audits or inspections doesn’t mean things slow down. You’re proactively looking for indicators that can precede quality issues—this could be analyzing “thawed orders” data and trying to reduce the incidence rate or analyzing any negative feedback we’re receiving about packaging. You understand the link between quality and customer service and know how to constantly monitor customer data in a way that drives your next step & next focus. You know that your goal is always to eliminate a potential problem before it ever becomes one.
Naturally resourceful & know how to operate as an independent problem solver. Open-ended questions like “find a new local 3rd party lab and evaluate their microbiology chops’’ or “re-design our food safety program to accommodate a 2nd shift” don’t scare you. You know exactly what to do with very little guidance.
Level-headed in stressful situations—you’re an excellent firefighter and know how to act in a timely yet resolved manner to find the best solution forward
Bachelor’s degree in Microbiology, Biology, Chemistry, Food Science or related field
HACCP, PCQI, SQF training & certification
Willingness to relocate to be on-site for production
Fluency with Microsoft Office & G-Suite

Strongly preferred:

Advanced degree in Microbiology, Biology, Chemistry, Food Science or related field
Significant experience in microbiology, validation studies, and lab testing processes
Experience working at a pet food company (human-grade, premium, RTE is even better)
Experience working with co-manufacturing relationships instead of just an internal plant
Experience working directly with regulatory agencies & inspectors (USDA / FDA)
Fluent in Spanish

Benefits

Free food stipend for your pets! (up to $300 / month)
Relocation Package
Health insurance, 401(k), Holidays & PTO

How to apply:

You MUST apply on this link directly: https://forms.gle/xPuvJzoiHNswthGp9
If you have any questions about the role, please email careers@vivarawpets.com
Applications will be evaluated on a rolling basis, we are trying to fill this role as soon as possible

Viva Raw

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Food Safety & Quality Assurance Manager