Sanitation Production Manager

About the role

Reporting to the Plant Manager, you will lead the Sanitation Department across two gluten-free bakery manufacturing facilities. You will provide leadership for all sanitation operations, food safety compliance activities, pest management programs, environmental monitoring initiatives, and sanitation team development. You will oversee a team of more than 30 employees while partnering with operations, maintenance, engineering, quality, and external service providers to ensure safe, efficient, and compliant plant operations.

Responsibilities

• Lead sanitation operations across four manufacturing facilities, ensuring compliance with company sanitation procedures, food safety standards, and regulatory requirements.
• Supervise and develop a team of 30+ sanitation employees, providing direction, training, resource planning, and technical leadership.
• Partner with operations, quality, maintenance, engineering, and external service providers to drive sanitation performance, continuous improvement, and business objectives.
• Manage sanitation, environmental monitoring, and pest management programs, including trend analysis, effectiveness evaluations, and corrective action implementation.
• Lead investigations involving contamination risks, environmental findings, reduced shelf life, customer complaints, or other sanitation-related issues, utilizing root cause analysis to prevent recurrence.
• Develop, implement, and maintain cost-effective sanitation programs, procedures, and best practices while monitoring key performance indicators and reporting results to leadership.
• Serve as the technical expert for sanitary design by reviewing equipment installations, modifications, capital projects, and new product introductions to ensure compliance with food safety and sanitation requirements.
• Validate cleaning methods, sanitation plans, and verification procedures for new equipment, facility modifications, and operational changes.
• Conduct internal sanitation and pest management audits and support regulatory inspections and external audits.
• Serve as the site resource for pest management programs, facility repairs, and good manufacturing practices that support effective pest prevention.
• Foster a culture of safety by ensuring sanitation personnel receive appropriate training and follow established safety practices.

Requirements

• High school diploma or GED required
• Bachelor’s degree or 7 years of related work experience
• Minimum of 5 years of food manufacturing experience in sanitation leadership roles

Qualifications

• Knowledge of Food and Drug Administration, United States Department of Agriculture, Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point requirements, and other food processing regulations
• Knowledge of sanitary design, sanitation systems, environmental monitoring, pest management, food manufacturing processes, and food safety principles
• Understanding of microbiological organisms and their impact on process design, sanitary design, sanitation programs, and product safety
• Strong leadership, communication, relationship-building, and cross-functional collaboration skills
• Experience using performance metrics, trend analysis, and data-driven problem solving to improve sanitation and food safety outcomes

Skills

• Bilingual English and Spanish language skills are preferred
• Be available to provide on-call support as needed, including responding to operational issues, emergencies, or business needs outside of regularly scheduled working hours

Benefits

• Health: Comprehensive healthcare plans, wellness incentive program, mental wellbeing support and fitness reimbursement
• Wealth: Great pay, bonus incentive opportunity, matching 401(k) and stock purchase plan
• Growth: Career development opportunities, employee resource groups, on-demand learning and tuition reimbursement
• Balance: Paid-time off, parental leave, flexible work-schedules (subject to your location and role) and volunteer opportunities