Onsite Quality & Manufacturing Engineer — Co-Manufacturing

David; Illinois; On-site; USD 140,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, Vision, and Dental Insurance

Company equity

401(k) with 4% match

Gym expenses covered

Job summary

David is seeking an on-site Manager of Quality, Engineering and Manufacturing to ensure products are built to the highest standards. You will spend substantial time on the production floor with co-manufacturers, mastering processes, materials, and equipment while driving rapid containment and root-cause resolution.

You will lead investigations into deviations and defects, apply rigorous engineering problem-solving, and design plant trials to validate improvements.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in manufacturing quality, manufacturing engineering, process engineering, food manufacturing, or a similar hands-on technical environment.
• Strong quality mindset with an exceptionally high bar for product consistency and attention to detail.
• Demonstrated experience leading root cause analysis, corrective actions, process improvement, and technical investigations.
• Ability to use data and experimentation to separate symptoms from root causes and make sound technical decisions.

Responsibilities

• Serve as David’s primary onsite quality and technical representative at key co-manufacturing partners, spending significant time on the production floor.
• Own day-to-day manufacturing quality performance, ensuring products consistently meet David’s specifications and standards.
• Develop a deep technical understanding of manufacturing processes, equipment, raw materials, product attributes, and sources of process variation.
• Identify quality and manufacturing issues early and drive rapid containment, root cause analysis, corrective action, and sustained resolution.
• Lead structured investigations into deviations, defects, consumer complaints, process failures, and recurring manufacturing issues.
• Apply engineering problem-solving wherever issues arise, including equipment performance, process conditions, material handling, formulation execution, packaging, and production methods.
• Design and execute plant trials and experiments to understand process behavior, validate solutions, and improve manufacturing performance.
• Establish process controls, operating parameters, specifications, and standards that improve consistency and reduce variation.
• Drive continuous improvement across quality, yield, scrap, throughput, reliability, and overall process capability.
• Partner with co-manufacturer Quality, Operations, Maintenance, and Engineering teams to implement improvements and hold partners accountable for results.
• Partner with Quality, R&D, Manufacturing, Procurement, Commercialization, and Planning to solve problems and scale products and processes.
• Support commercialization and scale-up of new products, processes, ingredients, equipment, and manufacturing lines.
• Use manufacturing and quality data to identify trends, prioritize opportunities, and measure whether corrective actions and process improvements are working.
• Build systems and standards that allow learnings from production issues to improve the broader manufacturing network.
• Respond quickly when manufacturing problems arise, going where the highest-priority technical or quality issue requires support.

Skills

Manufacturing quality

Manufacturing engineering

Process engineering

Food manufacturing

Data analysis

Root cause analysis

Job description

David is seeking an on-site Manager of Quality, Engineering and Manufacturing to ensure products are built to the highest standards. You will spend substantial time on the production floor with co-manufacturers, mastering processes, materials, and equipment while driving rapid containment and root-cause resolution.

You will lead investigations into deviations and defects, apply rigorous engineering problem-solving, and design plant trials to validate improvements.