Production Kitchen Lead Chef — Build & Scale Culinary Ops

Dineamic Australia; City of Melbourne; On-site; AUD 100,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Dineamic Australia is seeking a seasoned Head of Culinary to lead a high-volume kitchen operation in Melbourne. You will shape daily kitchen culture, supervise a growing brigade, and partner with the Culinary leadership to sustain quality at scale.

You will drive food safety, efficiency, and training across the team, while managing records and contributing to site upgrades. Strong leadership across diverse staff and a proactive mindset are essential.

Qualifications

• Background in culinary, professional cookery or food production.
• Strong understanding of ingredients, food safety cooking methods, cooking equipment and product behaviour at scale.
• Comfortable working with staff of all backgrounds and skill levels, and able to get the best out of each of them.
• Effective communicator with the ability to train and guide.
• A natural improver — spots what could work better and follows through to make it happen.
• Able to keep motivation and standards high through busy or challenging periods.
• Experience in food manufacturing or high-volume production kitchen environments (preferred).
• Experience with rostering to a budget and monitoring labour (preferred).
• Knowledge of HACCP, food safety, and commercial cooking equipment (preferred).

Responsibilities

• Lead the kitchen team day to day — setting the pace, the standards and the tone on the floor.
• Drive kitchen culture, food safety culture and operational efficiency across the brigade.
• Work closely with the Assembly team to deliver finished goods on time in full, ensuring components are cooked to standard, resourced appropriately, and ingredient specifications are followed.
• Lead, train and develop the brigade — building a strong, motivated team through a period of business change and growth, including upskilling existing team members and bringing new starters up to standard.
• Collaborate closely with the Head of Culinary and Culinary Specialist to preserve quality and consistency at scale.
• Maintain accurate production records in line with food safety and production guidelines.
• Take an active role in planned site and equipment upgrades — identifying improvements, trialling and building new processes and embedding them across the team.

Skills

Culinary background

Food safety & HACCP

Staff management

Kitchen operations

High-volume production

Food quality control

Kitchen equipment knowledge

Roster planning

Job description

Dineamic Australia is seeking a seasoned Head of Culinary to lead a high-volume kitchen operation in Melbourne. You will shape daily kitchen culture, supervise a growing brigade, and partner with the Culinary leadership to sustain quality at scale.

You will drive food safety, efficiency, and training across the team, while managing records and contributing to site upgrades. Strong leadership across diverse staff and a proactive mindset are essential.