Quality Engineer

Responsibilities

Provide Quality and Food Safety technical guidance, analysis, and leadership driving improvements in manufacturing processes, sanitation processes/systems, and quality systems.

• Represent Quality and Food Safety as a leader of the plant's Quality Pillar within the company's IWS program for assigned business unit(s).

• Ensure compliance to Danone Food Safety & Quality standards, ODA, FDA, and FSSC 22000 standards, and adherence to specifications. Support internal and external audit requirements. Perform necessary audit tasks and support closure of action items.

• Participate as a member of the Food Safety Team and assist in the development, revisions, and implementation of the Food Safety Plan.

• Support the Quality Management System and participate in development and review of quality and sanitation SOPs. Assist and potentially lead implementation of QFS programs.

• Develop, design, and conduct training and mentoring about food safety and quality topics to develop a strong quality culture.

• Assess and work to improve process capability across key product platforms.

• Compile and analyze KPIs indicative of production line health, including quality performance, microbiological quality, preventive maintenance, and sanitation effectiveness, and drive improvement actions.

• Investigate, analyze, and assess consumer and customer complaints. Develop, train, and launch the process to engage the entire manufacturing team on the process to investigate and improve complaint processes. Ensure product non-conformances and process nonconformances are tracked and logged for corrective action into the Quality system.

• Develop expertise working within the various Danone ERP (SAP), WMS, LIMS, and Quality computer systems (Veeva).

• Support the analysis of customer and consumer feedback to identify improvement opportunities. Drive improvement by implementing corrective actions.

• Provide training and mentoring to operations teams on food safety and quality related topics to develop a strong quality culture.

• Support the validation of cleaning effectiveness via the sanitation ("Neptune") program.

• Support the development of quality and sanitation SOPs.

• Manage and troubleshoot non-conformances (raw materials, packaging, product, environmental monitoring, etc.) and drive root cause analysis. Assign corrective action, collaborate with supply-quality and other functions, and follow up on completion.

• Support change management processes related to new products, packaging, equipment, and processes.

• Bachelor's Degree in a science or engineering related field (Microbiology, Food Safety, Food Engineering, or similar) or other technical discipline.

• 5+ years of experience in the dairy/food/beverage manufacturing industry.

• In lieu of a degree, 10+ years of experience in the dairy/food/beverage manufacturing industry will be considered.

• Supervisory experience preferred, not required.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• Proven ability to establish, optimize and maintain world-class quality system and team.

• Prior experience using structured and data driven problem-solving techniques (RCPS, DMAIC, Six-sigma, LEAN, etc.).

• Excellent communication, leadership and interpersonal skills.

• The ability to influence others and be a team player.

• The ability to develop and implement core work practices and standards that ensure excellence in quality.

• The ability to rapidly assess, analyze, and quickly resolve complicated quality problems with little initial information or direction and with varying degrees of ambiguity.

• The ability to multitask and manage priorities while allocating time to long-term, quality continuous improvement projects.

• Strong self-management skills and comfort working with minimal supervision.

• Established project management skills.

• Must bring leadership, interpersonal and communication skills required to interact with various levels of plant and corporate personnel and influence others.

• Willingness to work flexible schedules as needed to support 7-day per week, 24-hour per day production facilities. Work schedules could include off-shift or weekend work.