Technical Manager

Pilgrim's Europe; City Of London; On-site; GBP 65,000 - 85,000; Full time

Job summary

Pilgrim's Europe is seeking a proactive Technical Lead to manage the site’s Quality & Food Safety team. You will champion HACCP, drive internal and external audits, and oversee corrective actions while mentoring staff to uphold the highest standards.

You will coordinate with internal departments and external customers to ensure specifications are met and continue improving food safety culture across the site.

Qualifications

• Proven track record in FMCG/Chilled meat operations.
• Experience with retailer technical representatives and audits.
• Strong understanding of food safety systems and quality management.

Responsibilities

• Lead technical team to uphold product safety and quality specs.
• Drive HACCP, internal/external audits and corrective actions.
• Investigate non-conformances and implement CAPA plans.
• Coach staff and foster a culture of quality and safety.
• Collaborate with suppliers and customers on quality issues.
• Lead continuous improvement and cost-control initiatives.
• Prepare site for customer audits and regulatory visits.

Skills

Food safety

Quality control

Leadership

Root cause analysis

Auditing

HACCP knowledge

Cross-functional collaboration

Problem solving

Continuous improvement

Education

BSc or MSc in food science or related

Food Safety Level 4

Lead Auditor qualification

Job description

Be an ambassador for Quality and Food Safety by their visible presence on site demonstrating behaviours and always reinforcing Pilgrims commitment to the highest standards.

Responsible for managing the Technical Team, ensuring all requisite product safety and quality specifications and monitoring tools are in place.

To Participate in the development and maintenance of the Food safety and quality culture within the site

Liaising with internal departments and external customers to implement internal and external specifications with supporting internal documentation. Implementation and completion of internal and external key technical performance indicator reports.

Key Responsibilities\Measures of Success

• Act as mentor to all staff within the department and the wider teams where necessary in championing food safety and quality values
• Actively support site events designed to promote standards and awareness of Quality and Food Safety.
• Ensure that non-conformances relating to Quality and Food Safety are fully investigated using root cause analysis to define effective corrective and preventive action plans
• To ensure that team members at all levels understand their part in achieving departmental operation objectives
• Be responsible for the recruit, performance, conduct, attendance, and disciplinary matters for all employees in your team, carrying out back to work returns, disciplinary meetings with the support of your Hr department.
• Facilitate own team to achieve the required output in the most efficient manner and build a strong team for future development needs
• Coach, support and train your team to ensure they have the right skills to carry out their nominated tasks
• Develop and maintain internal relationships with peers in other disciplines to enable cross functional co-operation.
• Audit and support site to achieve the requirements of customer codes of practice. Facilitating the rollout of shared learning and best practice
• Continual promotion of Food Safety, legality and Quality within the business.
• Responsible for preparing the site for and managing audits and visits conducted by customers, statutory bodies, and third-party auditing bodies, ensuring closure on actions.
• Use knowledge to provide technical advice and support to the business and its customer and be fully coherent with current/relevant industry.
• Pro-actively investigate trends and implement actions that will derive improvements to prevent and if necessary, resolve potential food safety or quality issues
• Conduct investigations where pathogenic micro-organisms and/or high levels of spoilage micro-organisms are detected, communicating actions to key customer contacts, and implementing crisis systems where appropriate
• Develop and communicate suitable solutions to ensure effective implementation and compliance to new standards/COP's
• Lead drive and provide hands on support to conduct technically challenging investigations of processes and root cause analysis.
• Control of food safety through the application of the systematic approach of Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP). To implement control, monitoring and corrective action systems, for the manufacture of all existing products and all new product development. These to be appropriate to the products, processes, and customers, to meet all legal requirements of the business to provide due Diligence Defence
• Apply problem solving techniques to resolve operating problems and recommend improvements to maintain operation running costs at a planned level
• Must be aware of all business requirements and understand the impact of their decisions
• To highlight any potential areas that can reduce cost
• Implement the site vision and strategic plans interfacing with all key stakeholders to ensure successful delivery with key objectives and measurement through the Technical team KPI performance indicators
• Implement site overhead management control through the technical team with support from other departments
• Driving 'innovation' in technical processes and quality/food safety control points through alignments to customer critical quality requirements and their key product compliance KPI's.
• Drive key food safety and quality performance metrics internally and externally with robust action plans to achieve agreed targets. Key customer Technical contact championing compliance
• Provide an excellent customer service by building strong relationships at all levels of the business.
• Provide technical support and information to commercial contacts
• Deliver Customer expectations as part of the site Technical Team and Senior Management Team
• Be ambassadors for and promote the culture of Quality and Food Safety by their visible presence on site demonstrating behaviours and reinforcing our commitment to the highest standards at all times
• Participate in external Quality and Food Safety audits and customer technical visits taking the lead within their department or area of responsibility
• Ensure that non-conformances relating to Quality and Food Safety are fully investigated using root cause analysis to define effective corrective and preventive action plans
• Support and be involved in the regular review and achievement of the site Quality and Food Safety objectives
• Liaise with suppliers and customers on quality issues

• 3 years Chilled food industry experience
• Previous Technical experience of FMCG food related manufacturing operations
• Proven management capability in a Technical, QA or Process Development function
• Experience working with Technical representatives of major retailers
• Relevant factory audit experience and / or qualification
• Relevant raw materials knowledge
• Meat processing knowledge
• Knowledge of processing requirements of fresh meat products
• Microbiology effecting meat and meat products
• Knowledge of raw meat (including pork slaughter and associated welfare standards)
• Knowledge of continuous improvement tools and techniques
• Proven experience in cost control, health and safety and management of quality systems
• Proven track record in microbiological and hygiene-based management programmes
• Knowledge of Ethical trading requirements and control systems
• Qualifications [Accredited]
• BSc. Food related subject and / or science degree with relevant food experience
• Food Safety Level 4
• Lead Auditors