Chief Operating Officer - Supplement Manufacturing

Sun Nutraceuticals•Fort Lauderdale, FL

2d•Onsite

About The Position

Sun Nutraceuticals is a South Florida dietary supplement manufacturer on pace for $12M in 2026 revenue, with 33 employees and roughly 16,500 sq ft across two facilities located 1.5 miles apart. One site runs powders, capsule/tablet packaging, solids packaging, and warehouse operations; the other runs gummy, liquid, and bottling operations. We manufacture our own brands and a wide range of white-label products in a cGMP environment — GMP certified, FDA registered and inspected. This is a founder-led company where too many operating decisions still route through the founder layer. The COO's job is not to replace founder judgment — it's to build the operating system so production priorities, cross-functional tradeoffs, accountability, and escalation paths live in a repeatable management system rather than daily founder routing. This is a highly visible, floor-facing executive role. You need to be comfortable walking the floor, leading through managers and supervisors, enforcing schedule discipline, and making the company more predictable without slowing it down. You'll report to the ownership group and have real operating authority: operating cadence across both facilities, plant priorities within approved commercial commitments, department accountability and escalation paths, day-to-day operating tradeoffs, and the authority to say "not yet" when the operating plan isn't ready.

Requirements

A hands-on plant operations leader, not an executive coordinator
Experienced in regulated manufacturing — supplement, food, pharma, nutraceutical, medical device, cosmetic, or adjacent cGMP environments
Fluent in batch records, Quality release, quarantine controls, cleaning/changeover discipline, traceability, and audit-facing process rigor
Proven running multi-line, labor-sensitive operations where scheduling, changeover, and cross-functional handoff discipline mattered
Able to manage managers and leads without becoming a micromanager or a passive dashboard reviewer
Strong systems/process orientation: ERP, trackers, metrics, standard work, production meetings, escalation cadence
Commercially aware — you understand how customer commitments translate into capacity, labor, Quality, materials, and operating cost

Nice To Haves

dietary supplement/nutraceutical manufacturing experience
owner-operated business experience
experience scaling founder-led operations into a professional management system
exposure to automation projects and capacity-triggered capital decisions
white-label or contract manufacturing background

Responsibilities

Operating cadence and schedule discipline — the daily and weekly operating rhythm across both facilities: production meetings, schedule review, constraint calls, and issue closure. Make constraints visible before they become emergencies. Replace reactive daily product-switching with disciplined batching that reduces changeovers.
Site execution and throughput — stabilize the solids site's rhythm across powder production, packaging, and warehouse; drive throughput at the gummy/liquid site without creating quality, cleaning, traceability, or release risk. Keep bottlenecks visible and treat equipment purchases as evidence-based decisions, not reactions to a busy week.
Cross-functional integration — clear handoffs between Sales/Account Management, Planning, Production, Quality, Procurement, Warehouse, Engineering, and ownership. New business gets translated into capacity, materials, release timing, and labor reality before commitments overload the floor.
Quality-aware operations — build production plans around realistic batch-record flow, review timing, quarantine, cleaning, and customer-ready inventory timing. Quality retains independent release authority; you build the cadence that keeps everyone aligned before issues become emergencies.
People leadership and org buildout — manage and develop the existing operations layer; help define and sequence the next layer of operations leadership; develop managers who can own their areas without daily executive routing.
Systems and metrics — run the business on ERP, scheduling tools, production trackers, and floor evidence, not anecdotes. Establish a clean operating baseline across schedule reliability, throughput, labor utilization, and release flow.