The Principal Innovation Quality serves as the primary point of contact for Quality and Food Safety across the Dairy Culinary Solutions category, with additional oversight for frozen and chilled products. This role leads quality and food safety initiatives throughout product and process development, ensuring products are safe, compliant, and ready for successful commercialization. Partnering cross-functionally with R&D, Manufacturing, Operations, and Quality teams, the incumbent drives risk assessments, scientific studies, continuous improvement initiatives, and quality-by-design strategies while providing technical leadership, regulatory guidance, and project management expertise to support innovation, consumer safety, and business growth.
Responsibilities:
- Represent Quality & Food Safety on designated product and process development projects. Execute end-to-end Quality and Food Safety project deliverables, ensuring appropriate quality, food safety, and compliance assessments are correctly completed before industrialization to enable flawless implementation and assure consumer safety.
- Assess the food safety of products, ingredients, and processes by designing, overseeing, and interpreting scientific studies, including shelf-life studies, challenge studies, method development, and validation activities, utilizing sound Design of Experiments (DOE) principles.
- Serve as the primary Quality and Food Safety contact for the Dairy Culinary Solutions category, with additional responsibility for frozen and chilled product categories.
- Lead cross-functional working groups to identify category needs, develop action plans, and implement strategic improvements that strengthen end-to-end Quality and Food Safety performance with focus on quality by design.
- Define category requirements, documentation, and knowledge-transfer strategies to support Innovation & Renovation (I&R) initiatives. Establish project scope, identify gaps, and lead plans to ensure requirements are clearly defined and effectively implemented.
- Author, maintain, and support the implementation of Quality & Food Safety standards and guidelines to ensure alignment with company and regulatory requirements, with focus on dairy culinary solutions category.
- Provide Quality and Food Safety expertise to factories, markets, and zones, supporting technical problem solving, risk assessments, continuous improvement initiatives, and technical assistance requests.
- Demonstrate digital savviness and agility by rapidly learning, adopting, and applying digital tools and solutions to increase efficiency, improve decision-making, and enhance Quality & Food Safety outcomes.
- Prepare clear, concise, and impactful communications for stakeholders, including Business Review of Quality (BRQ) materials, ensuring key quality, food safety, risk, and/or project insights are effectively communicated to support decision-making and awareness.
- Identify opportunities for innovation, value creation, and continuous improvement. Lead projects that accelerate innovation, deliver business objectives on time, and maintain strong stakeholder communication and alignment throughout project execution.
- Support site Quality and Food Safety team in maintaining compliance, preparing for and participating in internal audits, and addressing food safety-related challenges as needed.
Qualifications/Certifications:
- Minimum of a Bachelor of Science degree in Microbiology, Food Science or relevant field. Relevant Graduate degree preferred.
- FSSC Lead Auditor Certification
- HACCP Certification
- FSMA PCQI Certification
- ISO 22000/ISO 9001
Critical Experience:
- Bachelor’s degree in Microbiology, Food Science, or a related scientific field required; advanced degree preferred.
- Minimum 10 years of food industry experience in manufacturing, R&D, or product development, preferably with exposure to dairy culinary, frozen, and chilled food categories.
- Demonstrated ability to apply scientific and technical expertise to ensure product and process safety and deliver right-first-time solutions.
- Quality Management and manufacturing experience preferred; Factory Quality Manager experience highly desirable.
- Ability to navigate ambiguity, assess risks, and make sound food safety and quality decisions with minimal supervision.
- Active participation in external food industry networks and professional organizations preferred.
- Experience with Quality Management Systems (QMS) and continuous improvement methodologies preferred.
- Ability to coach, train, and influence others without direct reporting relationships.
- Strong written, verbal, and presentation skills, with the ability to communicate effectively and influence both technical and non-technical audiences.
- Proven stakeholder management skills, including collaboration, coaching, and relationship building across functions and organizational levels.
- Strong leadership and team facilitation skills, including the ability to lead cross-functional teams, anticipate challenges, and develop others.
- Excellent project and process management skills, with a track record of planning, prioritizing, and delivering results.
- Digital proficiency and agility, with the ability to adopt and leverage evolving digital tools, data, and technologies to improve efficiency and decision-making.
- Available to travel 20 – 30%.
