Quality Assurance Technician

Reports to Operations Quality Assurance Manager

Job Summary:

To effectively maintain food safety according to government regulations and company standards and quality standards according to company specifications.

Office Environment: 19% of the work is conducted in an office setting, involving time spent on computer research, project management, and communication with team members and stakeholders. Frequent participation in both in-person and virtual meetings, including project updates, strategy sessions, and presentations to management and stakeholders.

Production Environment: 80% Regular visits to the production areas will involve exposure to machinery, noise, varying temperatures, humidity, and wet conditions.

Travel: <1% Occasional travel for training, meetings, conferences, etc.

Schedule: Flexible schedule, including evenings, weekends, and holidays as needed based on operational requirements.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Monitors packing weights, temperatures, label checks, sanitation, foreign material, code date, piece counts, and other line quality checks.
2. Maintain quality and ensure food safety. Work with monitoring employees to improve accuracy and reliability.
3. Monitors employee hygiene and sanitary practices. Daily work with employees and supervisors’ online sanitation performances and employee personal habits on the floor.
4. Work in the lab on sample collections and assist when needed in shipment preparations.
5. Tag product or equipment to be retained or to cease operation when necessary.
6. Stop any operation within the facility that presents quality, food safety, or personnel safety issue.
7. Monitor proper specifications for products being produced and run label checks for specified materials, packaging, and label approvals.
8. Monitor facility inspection and operations.
9. Monitors traffic flow of equipment and employees. Look for incidences of possible cross-contamination and sanitation record keeping.
10. Complete Listeria swabs on environmental and product contact. Understand the need for the program.
11. Monitor USDA testing and QA Retain all products that are tested from the day of production.
12. Load, retrieve, and report temperature probes for smokehouse temperature balancing.