Senior Director of Food Safety and Quality

Select Milk Producers•La Crosse, WI

6d•Hybrid

About The Position

This role provides strategic leadership and hands-on direction for food safety and quality systems supporting Select Custom Solutions and Mill Haven Foods Group operations in Wisconsin. The position is responsible for leading food safety and quality activities across three powder blending, packaging, warehousing, distribution, and fulfillment facilities, ensuring compliance with company, customer, regulatory, and GFSI/SQF requirements. Approximately 80% of the role is focused on supporting the three Wisconsin manufacturing and fulfillment sites, including food safety and quality systems, audit readiness, regulatory compliance, customer requirements, team development, and continuous improvement. The remaining 20% of the role serves as a food safety and quality subject matter expert through Select Services consulting engagements, including support in areas such as hygienic design, sanitation optimization, regulatory and GFSI readiness, training, and commissioning/validation activities. This is a senior leadership role that combines plant-level engagement with broader systems ownership, cross-functional influence, and external-facing consulting support. The position partners closely with Operations, Engineering, Supply Chain, Packaging, R&D/Product Development, Commercial, and customer stakeholders to deliver safe, high-quality products and services.

Requirements

10+ years of progressively responsible experience in food safety and quality within food manufacturing, with multi-site leadership experience strongly preferred.
Demonstrated experience in dairy ingredients/proteins, dry blending and packaging, nutritional powders/supplements, and/or similar regulated food or ingredient environments.
Strong working knowledge of food safety and regulatory frameworks applicable to the supported operations, including FDA/FSMA Preventive Controls and USDA requirements where applicable.
Strong experience with GFSI schemes such as SQF and with third-party, customer, and regulatory audit management.
Demonstrated success leading food safety and quality systems, teams, and initiatives across manufacturing, packaging, warehousing, and distribution environments.
Proven ability to work cross-functionally across Operations, Engineering, Packaging, R&D/Product Development, Supply Chain/Logistics, Commercial, and customer-facing environments.
Hands-on capability with risk assessment, sanitation, hygienic design, environmental monitoring, allergen management, traceability, recall readiness, verification, and validation.
Strong communication and presentation skills, including the ability to translate complex technical issues into practical actions for plant leaders, executives, customers, and regulatory partners.
Experience supporting consulting, advisory, or customer-facing technical work is preferred.
HACCP certification
PCQI (Preventive Controls Qualified Individual)
SQF Practitioner or comparable GFSI practitioner certification

Nice To Haves

Practical judgment with a bias toward action, accountability, and operational follow-through.
Ability to balance strategic leadership with hands-on plant and consulting support.
Strong cross-functional influence skills and the ability to build trust across operating sites and client environments.
Continuous improvement mindset with experience applying tools such as root cause analysis, SPC, Lean, and Six Sigma.
Comfort operating across both internal plant leadership and external-facing consulting environments.

Responsibilities

Lead food safety and quality programs for Select Custom Solutions and Mill Haven Foods Group operations, including powder blending, packaging, warehousing, distribution, and fulfillment activities.
Own and continuously improve food safety plans, quality management systems, policies, procedures, and related controls across the network.
Ensure alignment of plant food safety and quality systems with company standards and applicable regulatory requirements, including FDA/FSMA Preventive Controls, USDA requirements where applicable, and GFSI/SQF standards.
Oversee sanitation, GMP, allergen, environmental monitoring, supplier/ingredient risk, and related food safety and quality requirements appropriate to the operations.
Promote alignment and consistency across the three sites through standard work, shared learning, and enterprise training.
Ensure audit readiness and support successful outcomes for customer, regulatory, and third-party audits and certifications, including GFSI/SQF and other applicable programs.
Lead follow-up on corrective and preventive actions, verification, and validation activities as needed.
Serve as a primary technical and regulatory liaison with customers, certification bodies, and federal, state, and local agencies, including FDA/FSMA and USDA where applicable.
Support customer and client audits, business reviews, technical discussions, and issue resolution related to food safety and quality performance.
Own traceability and recall readiness processes across the supported network, including mock recalls, product disposition, customer notifications, and crisis-response coordination, as appropriate.
Monitor and analyze food safety and quality performance indicators, including complaints, nonconformances, environmental results, audit findings, hold/release performance, yields/scrap, and internal deviation trends.
Use root cause analysis and continuous improvement tools to drive corrective action, measurable improvement, and stronger plant performance.
Lead risk assessments for new products, process changes, equipment commissioning, and facility modifications, and partner with Operations and Engineering to support hygienic design and validated controls.
Partner cross-functionally with Operations, Supply Chain/Logistics, Engineering, Packaging, Procurement, R&D/Commercialization, and Commercial teams to embed food safety and quality requirements into business operations, product launches, reformulations, and scale-ups.
Manage departmental budgets and resource planning, balancing compliance, customer requirements, risk reduction, and operational efficiency.
Provide approximately 20% of role capacity in support of Select Services consulting engagements as a food safety and quality subject matter expert.
Support consulting work in areas such as hygienic design reviews, sanitation optimization, regulatory and GFSI readiness, training, commissioning/validation, and related technical quality services.
Translate food safety, quality, and regulatory requirements into practical recommendations, policies, procedures, and training that reduce risk and improve performance for clients and internal stakeholders.
Represent Select Services professionally with customers, clients, and external partners in food safety and quality matters.
Provide direct leadership, coaching, and development for quality assurance teams across the three Wisconsin sites.
Clarify roles, set expectations, support succession planning, and create development plans that strengthen technical capability and leadership pipeline.
Foster a culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and collaboration across sites and functions.
Support hiring, training, coaching, performance management, and other personnel actions in coordination with plant leadership and Human Resources.
Support M&A integration efforts by participating in FSQ due diligence, assessing capability gaps, developing integration roadmaps, and helping standardize systems and practices across newly acquired sites.