Technical Quality Manager

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What we’re after: - Technical Quality Manager

Reporting Line: - Head of Quality

Lily’s Headquarters: - Goodge Street, Fitzrovia (with hybrid working between the office and working from home)

Equality and Inclusiveness at Lily’s Kitchen: -

At Lily’s Kitchen, we want to build and maintain a values-driven culture of trust and inclusion, one that empowers people safely and comfortably to express every characteristic of their personal identity and experience. We’re committed to supporting and encouraging a diverse and inclusive workforce. That means that whatever your ethnic origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age or status as an individual with a disability, you’ll get all the opportunities, respect and support you’d expect from a passionate business that cares about its people (as well as its pets).

We strongly encourage people of colour, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and non-binary people, veterans, parents, individuals with disabilities and/or other people from underrepresented groups to apply. Lily’s Kitchen is an equal opportunities employer and welcomes everyone to our team. If you need reasonable accommodation at any point in the application or interview process, please let us know.

In your application, please feel free to note which pronouns you use.

Location: -

This is a hybrid role, with a mix between being out on average 2 days per week (x1 day on site with suppliers, x1 day in our beautiful central London office (Goodge Street)) and the rest working from home.

Your place at the Lily’s Kitchen Table: -

As a certified B Corporation and leading Premium Pet Food brand we are looking for an individual to join the Lily’s Kitchen team, to be an integral part of our mission to be a force for good and top of the leaderboard in premium performance – for the communities we work in, the suppliers we partner wit, and in our treatment of the environment as part of the Quality Team.

A part of this big agenda involves collaborative working across all areas of the Lily’s Kitchen business to identify best practice, share good ideas and create an environment where Quality is considered integral to all decision making.

How will I make a difference? :-

We are looking for an individual who puts quality standards at the forefront of all decisions, activities, and actions they make. Someone who understands the importance of achieving the finest quality standards to deliver only the best to our customers on a consistent basis. A person who takes pride in ensuring that quality is never compromised and works with the Lily’s Kitchen team on continuous improvement to deliver that goal.

Our purpose is to feed more pets proper, natural food and we are committed to ensuring our quality keeps up with the commercial growth expected.

You will be the specialist in supporting the quality team with the technical requirements of the business, ensuring that the brand constantly delivers safe, high-quality food for pets.

Product Development

• You will be able to analyse and interrogate complaints data for trends and identify opportunities for improvement utilising reviews of non-complaint driven intel such as reviews.
• You will be the primary technical support for any brand-new innovation projects.
• You will work with the product development team to sign off on new product development through to launch.
• Take into consideration our social and environmental goals within every aspect of the role, eg. sustainable sourcing, recyclability

Supplier Management

• You will be confident in monitoring performance by gathering relevant data and producing statistical reports.
• Providing Weekly & Monthly reports to our suppliers
• Experienced in leading on action from follow up audits with non compliances and supporting improvements with suppliers.
• Populating data as part of the Supplier Management Quarterly Reviews reports and attendance at supplier Quarterly Reviews.
• Lead regular meetings with supplier quality teams.
• A confident traveller who will independently regularly visit factories and work with them to instigate best practice and ongoing improvements to quality processes.
• Attend first productions for new product launches when applicable.
• Support Product Developers with the development of new recipe QAS and first production at suppliers
• Problem solves any areas of concern identified from monthly reports and complaints logs.

Testing Protocol

• Responsible for populating the laboratory result logs.
• Manage, analyse, and review laboratory results on master log following sampling.
• Manage and develop annual sampling plan & follow up actions.
• Prepare third party sampling with the support of the QC function as part of business annual sampling programme.
• Manage the 3rd parties’ relationships, including preparing SLAs for Laboratory Relationships

Compliance

• You will have experience in dissecting data to ensure on pack and FEDIAF compliance.
• You will take a seat at the table of the Technical Committee group as Lily's Kitchen Representative for UK Pet Food

Stakeholder engagement

• You will be responsible for managing internal and external relationships to accelerate positive change within the pet food industry:
• You will feed into the KPI process with our suppliers, setting annual targets with our key suppliers to ensure they are continually improving on Quality and striving for continued success and brand trust.

How will I contribute to the team? :-

This is a new role to further enhance our Quality Function. It is the lead role in relation to technical function. This role also leads quality in our new product development.

You will regularly visit our suppliers and work with them to instigate best practice and ongoing improvements to quality processes in production & constant improvement in finished goods.

Management of third-party external laboratory relationships as part of our due diligence process to ensure continued safe production of pet food.

Critical:

• A Technical Qualification in Food or Feed Safety, particularly favourable is experience in the Feed Sector.
• You will hold an Auditor Qualification, preferably Lead Auditor qualified but experience alongside an Internal Auditor qualification will also be considered.
• At least five years of quality management experience and a track record of supporting businesses on their quality agenda.
• Experience in QMS implementation, HACCP and Trade Associations promoting good food quality business practice.
• A passion for delving deep to gather all the information available to support identifying improvement opportunities.
• Report writing skills and trend analysis, a whizz on excels and graph populating.
• Experience of working in the Feed production sector and ideally expert knowledge of FEDIAF
• You love working independently and with team mates to improve our strategy and products.
• Track record of partnering and delivering initiatives in conjunction with cross functional teams (Marketing, Supply Chain, R&D).
• Brilliant interpersonal skills, with the ability to develop relationships, collaborate and influence at all levels.
• A hard working and tenacious attitude with the ability to prioritize and a passion to meet goals and targets.
• You are comfortable working with various pet food products using sensory skills with strong attention to detail and commercial acumen to provide brand confidence.

Beneficial:

• An excellent understanding of what it means to be part of a B-Corp business
• Experience of working remotely in a Quality function with a variety of Manufacturing processes and locations
• And it goes without saying, you should have a real passion for pets

The Team

You will be part of the Quality team with focussed areas of responsibility to ensure a holistic Quality team that delivers the standards and trust required for a fast-growing, much-loved premium brand.

The team functions will include dedicated stakeholder relationships and the opportunity to introduce better ways of working with suppliers and collaboratively with other Lily’s Kitchen teams.

Our Perks

At Lily’s Kitchen we believe that everyone should enjoy their time at work. We reward the care our people put into their job, by caring for them in return. Our benefits are designed to make our people smile, save for the future, stay healthy and give back where they can and include:

• at work; what better way to put a smile on your face
• Working: flexitime, working from home, part-time working, flexible support, faith based public holidays
• for the Future and Protect Loved ones: a pension plan that goes beyond, the option for salary exchange and an option of an ethical pension fund reflecting our team’s attitudes and needs.Plus, a life assurance scheme to look after those that depend on you.
• healthy and well: Our team’s health and wellbeing is very important to us and we offer private medical, private dental, employee assistance programme, mental first aiders and a cycle to work scheme (and an electric car salary sacrifice scheme).
• our community: with a volunteering allowance we can give back to causes we are passionate about. Plus supporting and having fun together as a team.
• more …