Manager Food Safety Supplier

McCain Foods USA•Oakbrook Terrace, IL

1d•Onsite

About The Position

The Manager, Food Safety – Suppliers and External Manufacturing is responsible for the development, implementation, and continuous improvement of global food safety systems across the company’s external manufacturing network, including ingredient suppliers, co-manufacturers (co-mans), and Distribution. You will shape and improve supplier quality systems, audits, and performance metrics to boost product quality and risk mitigation. This role combines quality leadership with global collaboration to sustain supply chain resilience in both Potato and Snacking sectors. Your work helps drive customer satisfaction and regulatory alignment while enabling sustainable, high-quality production. This role ensures that all third-party partners meet or exceed company, regulatory, and GFSI-aligned food safety and quality standards, while driving risk-based oversight, compliance, and capability building to protect consumers and brand integrity.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Food Science, Microbiology, Chemistry, or related field.
8+ years of experience in food quality assurance or product development.
Frozen foods manufacturing experience is critical (Potato experience preferred).
Deep knowledge of food safety systems (HACCP, GMP, FSMA, GFSI), continuous improvement, and problem-solving.
Experience in supporting or leading product commercialization.
Strong project management, analytical, and communication skills.
Ability to work independently and as part of a cross-functional team on multiple projects.
Ability to identify aromas and basic tastes.
Familiarity with sensory science, packaging, and shelf-life testing.

Responsibilities

Define global food safety standards for external manufacturing, including suppliers and co-manufacturers.
Ensure GFSI compliance, regulatory requirements, and internal policies.
Establish and maintain a risk-based approach to supplier and external manufacturer qualification, approval, and performance management.
Create framework to ensure the global integrity of ingredients and packaging are within FSQ defined specifications
Track key suppliers’ KPIs to drive improvement in quality, cost, and delivery.
Drive reduction in supplier related Foreign Material incidents globally
Global performance monitoring, trends and partnership with procurement to drive change.
Manage CAPA processes and cross-functional alignment.
Develop risk mitigation plans for the supply chain to ensure resilience.
Execute global, complex mock traceability exercises across suppliers to validate traceability, lot tracking, and documentation integrity.
Align with Regulatory, R&D and procurement on supplier requirements, documentation, TraceGains workflows, and CAPA processes.
Own globally the Trace Gains systems, Support digital tools and dashboards
Serve as SME for external manufacturing food safety risks.
Analyze trends and drive systemic improvements:
Standardize supplier approval and monitoring processes.
Conduct on-site evaluations, on-boarding, training and coaching of internal teams and suppliers to promote a strong food safety culture.