Staff Specialist, Quality

Hershey Company; Hershey (PA); On-site; USD 93,000 - 116,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health & Wellbeing

401(k) match

Paid time off

Flexible working

Career development

Job summary

The Hershey Company is seeking a Staff Specialist, Quality in Hershey, PA to lead the integration of quality and food safety across newly acquired businesses. This role drives the Hershey Product Excellence Program, continuous improvement, regulatory compliance, and cross-functional collaboration.

You will mentor quality teams, coordinate audits, and manage complex incident responses while partnering with Manufacturing, Marketing, Legal, and external partners.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in industrial engineering, food engineering/manufacturing or a related technical/engineering field.
• Knowledge of federal and state food industry regulations including Food Safety Modernization Act, HACCP, Food Safety Standards.

Responsibilities

• Implement quality systems and programs to ensure quality, food safety and regulatory standards.
• Provide training programs, auditing of quality systems, complex troubleshooting and large-scale incident management.
• Develop and implement training programs to assure compliance and understanding of internal quality expectations and regulatory compliance.
• Provide mentoring to quality team members in manufacturing.
• Coach manufacturing plants on audit needs and quality systems audits across Supply Chain.
• Direct troubleshooting incidents of high complexity with potential large financial or regulatory impacts.
• Manage product holds and facilitate root cause analysis; partner with cross-functional groups to ensure communications and action plans.
• Serve as liaison for domestic and international regulatory agencies to manage product recalls, withdrawals, and recovery.

Skills

Quality systems

Auditing

Regulatory knowledge

Training programs

Root cause analysis

Cross-functional collaboration

FDA regulations

Education

Bachelor's degree in industrial engineering / food engineering

Job description

Note: If you apply for a role at Hershey through our career's website, we may use technologies that use automation to filter your candidacy based on objective criteria. We also use AI-enabled tools that help us facilitate the selection of our future Hershey talent. These tools may help with activities such as matching and scoring candidates to roles based on requirements and scheduling interviews. These systems process only the information you provide in your application, including your resume, work history, education, and responses to screening questions. While these technologies assist with certain steps in our recruitment process and may provide recommendations, all final decisions, including those affecting whether candidates advance to subsequent stages in the applicant process, are made by our talent acquisition teams with meaningful human review and independent judgment. Depending on your location and the specific role you apply for, additional disclosures about our use of AI in recruitment may be provided to you separately.

Staff Specialist, Quality

Location: Hershey, PA

Why Hershey:

At The Hershey Company, our culture is rooted in purpose and inspired by Milton Hershey's enduring vision that business should create opportunity for others. Through our commitment to corporate philanthropy, we create positive impact by supporting communities, helping children thrive, and operating as a business for good. This includes our deep and long standing partnership with Milton Hershey School, where we invest in education, workforce readiness, and hands on engagement to help students succeed beyond the classroom. Supported by strategic grantmaking, product donations, cross brand collaboration, and strong employee volunteerism, Hershey offers a place to work where making a difference-locally and globally-is part of how we do business every day.

How will you fit in the big picture?

Lead operations for the integration of quality and food safety of newly acquired business (M&A), including assessment of sites utilizing Hershey Product Excellence Program, continuous improvement, new products, executing supply chain strategy, and leading supply chain integration.

What will you do?

• Implement quality systems and programs to ensure company quality, food safety and regulatory standards are consistently achieved.
• Provide training programs, auditing of quality systems, complex troubleshooting and large-scale incident management.
• Develop and implement training programs to assure compliance and understanding of internal quality expectations and regulatory compliance.
• Provide mentoring to quality team members in manufacturing.
• Coach manufacturing plants on audit needs, assist with quality systems audits across Supply Chain.
• Provide recommendations and develop corrective and preventative action plans to ensure compliance standards are met.
• Direct troubleshooting incidents of high complexity with potential large financial or regulatory impacts.
• Manage product holds and facilitate root cause analysis Partner with cross-functional groups (Manufacturing, Marketing, Legal, etc.) and external business partners to ensure communications and action plans are established.
• Serve as liaison for domestic and international regulatory agencies to manage product recalls, withdrawals, and recovery.
• Act as a QA representative on cross-functional project teams, complex assignments and engineering projects including new manufacturing lines.
• Coordinate new product efforts from initial test runs to full-scale production to assure integrity of systems.
• Lead and implement food safety and quality systems for new products/new manufacturing lines at Hershey plants to meet company and regulatory requirements.
• Serve as a Subject Matter Expert for FDA Regulations, Global Food Safety Initiative, Data Management/Trending, Processing, Packaging, Environmental, Net Weight, Recipe Management, etc.
• Facilitate process/procedure improvement sessions related to incident management, serious product quality issues, and overall quality system improvements.
• Coach quality managers on specific issues.
• Travel 50% of work time domestically for consulting, auditing, training and development of quality managers and teams.

Minimum Requirements

• Education: Bachelor's degree in industrial engineering, food engineering/manufacturing or a related technical/engineering field plus three years of food manufacturing industry experience.

  Experience: Experience must include the following (but need not extend over the full period of required experience): Knowledge of federal and state food industry regulations including Food Safety Modernization Act, HACCP, Food Safety Standards.

Benefits and Perks

• Health & Wellbeing: Medical, dental, and vision coverage, plus wellness programs that support your physical and mental health

• Financial Security: Competitive pay, annual incentive opportunities, and a 401(k) with company match

• Time Off & Flexibility: Paid time off, company holidays, and flexible ways of working where applicable

• Growth & Development: Career development programs, learning opportunities, and internal mobility

Benefits may vary based on role, location, and eligibility.

The anticipated base salary range for this role is $93,120 to $116,400per year. The actual base salary offered will depend on a variety of jobrelated factors, including, but not limited to, experience, skill set, education, and training. In addition to a market-competitive base salary, our Total Rewards package includes performancebased incentives and a comprehensive, competitive benefits package designed to support overall physical, mental, and financial wellbeing (as applicable). Learn more about Hershey's benefits and all the resources Hershey provides to support our employees' physical, emotional, and financial wellbeing by visiting the Hershey Digital Employee Experience at www.askHRbenefits.hersheys.com

The Hershey Company is an Equal Opportunity Employer. The policy of The Hershey Company is to extend opportunities to qualified applicants and employees on an equal basis regardless of an individual's race, color, gender, age, national origin, religion, citizenship status, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, physical or mental disability, protected veteran status, genetic information, pregnancy, or any other categories protected by applicable federal, state or local laws. The Hershey Company is an Equal Opportunity Employer - Minority/Female/Disabled/Protected Veterans. You may request a reasonable accommodation if you are unable or limited in your ability to use or access our online application process as a result of a disability. You can request an accommodation via phone or email. To request an accommodation via phone, please call [phone] and leave a voicemail with your contact information. You may also email a request for accommodation to [e-mail]. Please be sure to include "Accommodation Needed" in the subject line. This will ensure that your email is routed to the appropriate contact who will handle your request.

Nearest Major Market: Harrisburg