Quality Manager - Fairfield, IL

Military Spouse Corporate Career Network•Fairfield, IL

4d•Onsite

About The Position

The Quality and Food Safety Manager is accountable for quality, food safety, regulatory compliance, and consumer protection at Ferrara’s Fairfield factory. This hands-on, floor-based leader owns the site quality and food safety agenda from raw materials through finished product release, ensuring that documented systems and processes are consistently followed on the production floor. The role requires sound technical judgment, operational urgency, and the ability to influence manufacturing, maintenance, sanitation, planning, warehousing, and leadership teams. The manager builds a culture where quality is non-negotiable, issues are escalated quickly, root causes are understood, and corrective actions are sustained. The position involves challenging the status quo, stopping production when necessary, and coaching teams to prevent repeat failures. The role is an on-site position at Ferrara’s Fairfield factory. Regular floor presence and flexibility are essential to support production schedules, collaboration, real-time problem solving, and cross-functional initiatives. Schedules may vary and are subject to change.

Responsibilities

Lead the Fairfield quality and food safety agenda from raw materials through finished product release.
Maintain daily production-floor presence to verify standards, coach behaviors, and drive accountability.
Set expectations for GMPs, food safety, sanitation, allergen control, foreign material prevention, and product quality.
Serve as the site authority for product holds, risk assessments, escalations, and dispositions.
Ensure compliance with company policies, FDA requirements, FSMA, HACCP/HARPC, GFSI standards, customer requirements, and regulatory expectations.
Lead site readiness for internal audits, regulatory inspections, customer audits, and corporate assessments.
Ensure traceability, mock recall, document control, change management, calibration, pest control, and product-release systems are effective.
Lead investigations into consumer complaints, foreign material events, microbiological failures, labeling concerns, process deviations, and other site risks.
Drive disciplined root-cause analysis and corrective and preventive actions (RCCA and CAPA) to eliminate repeat failures and strengthen controls.
Partner with Operations, Maintenance, Engineering, Supply Chain, and Continuous Improvement to resolve issues at their source.
Use site metrics to improve holds, complaints, right-first-time performance, sanitation performance, audit results, release cycle time, and repeat deviations.
Lead and develop the site FSQA team, establishing clear decision rights, shift coverage, and accountability.
Build technical capability through coaching, training, floor-based verification, and practical problem solving.
Strengthen FSQA partnership with operators, supervisors, mechanics, sanitation teams, and site leaders.
Build a high-ownership team culture focused on prevention, execution, and consumer protection.
Participate as a key member of the Fairfield site leadership team.
Bring a food safety and quality perspective to operational decisions, capital projects, new product launches, commercialization, line trials, and improvement initiatives.
Challenge decisions when product safety, compliance, quality, or consumer trust may be at risk.
Stop production when necessary to protect product safety, compliance, quality, or consumers.