Quality Assurance Specialist
Quality Assurance Specialist
About Our Client
Our Client is a mission-driven food company focused on delivering high-quality, fresh products while maintaining strong standards for ingredient integrity, food safety, and operational consistency. The company works closely with suppliers, culinary teams, and operations partners to ensure products meet brand expectations from sourcing through final guest experience.
About the Role
Our Client is seeking a Quality Assurance Specialist to support product quality, food safety, supplier compliance, and continuous improvement across the business. This role will partner closely with Culinary, Supply Chain, Food Safety, and Operations to help ensure ingredients, products, and processes meet internal standards for quality, safety, and regulatory compliance.
The ideal candidate is highly detail-oriented, collaborative, and comfortable working in a fast-paced food environment where supplier quality, documentation, commercialization, and issue resolution are all critical to success.
Key Responsibilities
Support the development, review, and maintenance of ingredient and product specifications to ensure consistency, quality, and compliance across menu items and the supply base.
Assist with supplier qualification, onboarding, and approval activities for new and existing ingredients, products, and manufacturing partners.
Partner with Culinary and Supply Chain teams on product commercialization, reformulations, ingredient substitutions, and continuous improvement efforts to maintain product integrity while supporting business goals.
Help monitor adherence to food safety and quality systems, including HACCP, FSQA expectations, supplier requirements, and audit readiness programs.
Review quality-related documentation and support compliance with regulatory, food safety, and internal quality standards.
Participate in product evaluations, tastings, and specification reviews to confirm products meet sensory and operational standards before launch or rollout.
Investigate and help resolve quality, ingredient, supplier, and operational issues, partnering with internal stakeholders to identify root causes and support corrective actions.
Support efforts tied to audit performance, quality trend tracking, and corrective/preventive action follow-up across suppliers and internal operations.
Collaborate with Operations to reinforce standards around food quality, temperature control, cleanliness, organization, and compliance execution at the restaurant or unit level.
Contribute to risk identification and mitigation related to supply continuity, product quality, food safety, and regulatory compliance.
Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Food Science, Microbiology, Biology, Chemistry, Nutrition, or a related field, or equivalent industry experience.
- 2+ years of experience in quality assurance, food safety, FSQA, supplier quality, or food manufacturing/foodservice quality systems.
- Working knowledge of HACCP, GMPs, supplier quality programs, food safety audits, and regulatory compliance in a food or beverage environment.
- Experience supporting specifications, documentation, product evaluations, and cross-functional commercialization projects.
- Strong problem-solving, communication, and organizational skills with the ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment.
- Proficiency in Microsoft Office or Google Workspace and comfort working with data, documentation, and reporting tools.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience in fresh food, prepared foods, restaurant supply chains, produce, refrigerated foods, or fast-casual foodservice.
- Familiarity with GFSI-benchmarked audits, supplier approval programs, and specification management.
- Experience working closely with culinary, operations, sourcing, and product development teams.
- Certification such as PCQI, HACCP, SQF, BRCGS, or ServSafe is a plus.
What You'll Bring
You are a proactive quality professional who understands how to balance food safety, product quality, supplier performance, and operational practicality. You enjoy working cross-functionally, solving problems, and building systems that protect both the brand and the customer experience.
FAQs
Congratulations, we understand that taking the time to apply is a big step. When you apply, your details go directly to the consultant who is sourcing talent. Due to demand, we may not get back to all applicants that have applied. However, we always keep your resume and details on file so when we see similar roles or see skillsets that drive growth in organizations, we will always reach out to discuss opportunities.
Yes. Even if this role isn’t a perfect match, applying allows us to understand your expertise and ambitions, ensuring you're on our radar for the right opportunity when it arises.
We also work in several ways, firstly we advertise our roles available on our site, however, often due to confidentiality we may not post all. We also work with clients who are more focused on skills and understanding what is required to future-proof their business.
That's why we recommend registering your CV so you can be considered for roles that have yet to be created.
Yes, we help with CV and interview preparation. From customised support on how to optimise your resume to interview preparation and compensation negotiations, we advocate for you throughout your next career move.