Back
Job Description
As posted by the hiring company
Job Overview:
Manager, Food Safety
Reports To: Sr. Quality Manager
Location: Glasgow, KY
Classification: Salaried Exempt
Position Summary
The Food Safety Manager is responsible for overseeing Bluegrass Ingredients' food safety programs, sanitation management, environmental monitoring, and regulatory compliance activities across the Glasgow, KY and Springfield, KY manufacturing facilities. This role ensures that all products meet established food safety and quality standards while maintaining compliance with SQF, USDA, FSMA, FDA, HACCP, GMP, and customer-specific requirements.
The Food Safety Manager will provide direct leadership to Sanitation across both site locations. Sanitation will report directly into this role while maintaining a dotted-line relationship to the site QA Managers to ensure effective verification, validation, escalation, and compliance oversight.
Key Responsibilities
Food Safety Leadership
- Lead plant-level and company-wide food safety initiatives to ensure compliance with company standards, customer expectations, and regulatory requirements.
- Provide technical guidance on HACCP, preventive controls, GMPs, allergen control, food defense, food fraud, traceability, environmental monitoring, and sanitation programs.
- Maintain and support annual reviews of Food Safety Plans, HACCP plans, preventive controls, and associated prerequisite programs for both Glasgow and Springfield sites.
- Analyze trends in environmental findings, customer complaints, nonconformances, audit findings, and sanitation verification results to identify root causes and drive corrective actions.
- Partner with site QA Managers to ensure food safety risks are identified, escalated, documented, and resolved effectively.
- Set clear expectations and KPIs related to sanitation effectiveness, environmental monitoring, audit readiness, corrective action closure, food safety training, and regulatory compliance.
Sanitation Management
- Directly oversee sanitation leadership and sanitation personnel at both Glasgow and Springfield site locations.
- Develop, implement, and monitor the Master Sanitation Schedule for both facilities.
- Ensure sanitation procedures, SSOPs, chemical controls, sanitation verification, and sanitation validation activities are effective and compliant with regulatory and customer requirements.
- Manage sanitation corrective actions and ensure timely follow-up on deficiencies identified through pre-operational inspections, environmental monitoring, internal audits, or customer/regulatory audits.
- Coordinate with QA Managers through a dotted-line structure to ensure sanitation activities are properly verified and documented prior to production start-up.
- Work with Operations, Maintenance, and Engineering to address equipment design, accessibility, hygienic zoning, and cleaning effectiveness concerns.
- Standardize sanitation expectations across both sites while allowing for site-specific equipment, scheduling, and risk-based requirements.
Environmental Monitoring & Pathogen Control
- Own and continuously improve the Environmental Monitoring Program across both Glasgow and Springfield facilities.
- Review and trend environmental monitoring results to identify recurring positives, harborage points, sanitation gaps, or emerging food safety risks.
- Lead investigations and corrective actions related to environmental positives, pathogen findings, sanitation failures, or potential contamination events.
- Work with external laboratories, QA, Operations, Maintenance, and Technical Services to ensure testing methods, sampling plans, and corrective actions are appropriate and defensible.
- Support risk assessments related to dry-processing environments, post-process contamination, allergen controls, and sanitation effectiveness.
Audit & Regulatory Support
- Support all corporate and plant-level audit preparations, including SQF, USDA, FDA, customer, and third-party audits across both site locations.
- Coordinate pre-audit readiness checks, internal audits, mock audits, and post-audit corrective action follow-ups related to food safety and sanitation programs.
- Maintain documentation and records required for regulatory, customer, and certification compliance.
- Serve as a key liaison with regulatory inspectors and customers during food safety, sanitation, environmental monitoring, and regulatory inspections.
- Ensure audit findings are addressed with effective root cause analysis, corrective actions, preventive actions, and verification of effectiveness.
Incident Management & Corrective Action
- Lead or support investigations involving customer complaints, nonconformances, potential recalls, withdrawals, regulatory concerns, allergen risks, environmental positives, or sanitation failures.
- Coordinate root cause analysis and corrective action activities with QA, Operations, Maintenance, Engineering, Technical Services, Warehouse, and Supply Chain.
- Develop risk assessments and provide recommendations during food safety events, escalations, or customer inquiries.
- Support regulatory responses and customer communications by ensuring data, documentation, and investigation summaries are accurate and defensible.
- Maintain and periodically test recall, traceability, and crisis management programs as assigned.
Leadership & Team Development
- Provide coaching, mentoring, and performance feedback to Sanitation leaders and sanitation team members across both sites.
- Promote a culture of food safety, sanitation ownership, accountability, and continuous improvement.
- Collaborate with QA Managers to ensure sanitation teams understand food safety expectations, documentation requirements, and verification standards.
- Develop and deliver training related to GMPs, sanitation, allergens, environmental monitoring, HACCP, preventive controls, and food safety expectations.
- Lead cross-functional food safety and sanitation meetings as needed to drive alignment, issue resolution, and accountability.
Cross-Functional Support
- Collaborate with Operations, Maintenance, Engineering, Technical Services, R&D, Warehouse, and Supply Chain to support food safety and sanitation objectives.
- Provide food safety input for new equipment, process changes, product launches, facility modifications, capital projects, and cleaning program changes.
- Support customer visits, technical reviews, and supplier or contract manufacturing evaluations as required.
- Assist with standardization of food safety and sanitation practices, documentation, and training across both facilities.
Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Food Science, Microbiology, Biology, Food Engineering, or related field preferred; equivalent industry experience may be considered.
- 7-10 years of progressive food safety, quality assurance, sanitation, or regulatory experience in food manufacturing.
- Experience managing sanitation programs, environmental monitoring programs, and audit preparations.
- Strong knowledge of GMPs, HACCP, USDA, SQF, FSMA, FDA, allergen control, sanitation principles, and environmental monitoring.
- Experience in dairy, spray drying, ingredient manufacturing, dry processing, or Ready-to-Eat food manufacturing preferred.
- PCQI, HACCP, SQF Practitioner, Internal Auditor, or related food safety certifications preferred.
- Excellent leadership, communication, documentation, training, and problem-solving skills.
- Ability to travel between Glasgow and Springfield facilities as required.
Performance Indicators
- Audit readiness and audit score improvements.
- Reduction in sanitation-related findings, customer complaints, and nonconformances.
- Environmental monitoring compliance, trend improvement, and corrective action effectiveness.
- Sanitation validation results and compliance with the Master Sanitation Schedule.
- Timely closure of corrective actions and verification of effectiveness.
- Food safety training completion and sanitation team competency levels.
- Regulatory inspection outcomes and customer confidence during food safety escalations.
