Senior Packaging Production Designer
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Summary
At Thorne, a science-backed supplements and wellness company, the Senior Packaging Production Designer leads production-ready packaging artwork for a 200+ SKU global redesign — building mechanical files, managing prepress/proofing, and keeping regulated labels compliant. Expert Adobe skills and 10+ years of CPG packaging production experience required. Contract-to-hire, remote.
At Thorne, we work to deliver high-quality, science-backed solutions to empower individuals to take a proactive approach to their well-being. Each day begins with a mission to help others discover and achieve their best health. We count on our team members to challenge and push the boundaries to make that happen. At Thorne, you’ll be joining a team of more than 750 passionate individuals committed to our cause of providing superior health solutions at every age and life stage.
The Senior Production Packaging Designer is responsible for leading the mechanical development, production readiness, and ongoing maintenance of packaging and labeling artwork across the organization’s global product portfolio. This role serves as the primary production artwork owner, ensuring packaging moves accurately and efficiently from approved creative through cross-functional review, final production files, printer proofs, and release.
The Senior Production Packaging Designer is responsible for leading the mechanical development, production readiness, and ongoing maintenance of packaging and labeling artwork across the organization’s global product portfolio. This role serves as the primary production artwork owner, ensuring packaging moves accurately and efficiently from approved creative through cross-functional review, final production files, printer proofs, and release.
Working closely with Creative, Quality, Regulatory Affairs, Medical Affairs, Legal, PDG, and external production partners, this individual will translate approved design direction into accurate, compliant, and production-ready packaging while maintaining consistency across SKUs, formats, vendors, and production runs.
This role provides a single point of ownership for packaging production and helps establish the standards, processes, and governance needed to manage ongoing packaging needs - including new product launches, product updates, regulatory and formulation changes, certifications, renames, new formats, and other business-driven revisions.
The ideal candidate combines exceptional production design expertise with strong operational ownership, attention to detail, and a systems-oriented mindset. They are equally comfortable executing packaging artwork, navigating complex approval workflows, partnering with printers and vendors, and building processes that improve consistency and efficiency across the portfolio.
Day-to-Day Packaging Ownership
- Serve as the day-to-day owner of packaging production artwork across the product portfolio, managing work from approved creative through mechanical development, review, approval, prepress, proofing, and final release.
- Translate approved creative concepts into accurate, production-ready mechanical artwork across multiple packaging formats, sizes, product variants, markets, and print processes.
- Build and maintain packaging artwork using approved dielines and specifications, including regulatory copy, ingredient and nutrition information, claims, certifications, barcodes, symbols, legal language, trademarks, and print specifications.
- Own ongoing packaging revisions resulting from product launches, regulatory changes, formulation or ingredient updates, claims, certifications, renames, legal requirements, manufacturing changes, and other approved business needs.
- Evaluate the impact of packaging changes across related SKUs, formats, and markets and ensure updates are implemented consistently across all affected files.
Packaging Quality, Compliance & Production
- Partner with Quality, Regulatory, Medical, and the Product Team to ensure approved packaging and labeling requirements are accurately reflected in final production artwork.
- Perform comprehensive quality-control reviews before artwork is routed, approved, or released, identifying inconsistencies, errors, and production risks before manufacturing.
- Collaborate directly with printers, converters, prepress vendors, packaging suppliers, Engineering, and Operations to ensure artwork meets technical and manufacturing specifications.
- Review and approve digital proofs, contract proofs, press proofs, and color targets; partner with printers during press approvals when required.
- Ensure color, print quality, typography, imagery, and other design details are executed consistently across vendors, substrates, packaging formats, and production runs.
- Identify and resolve artwork, dieline, prepress, print, and production issues before manufacturing while protecting the integrity of approved creative.
- Select and specify appropriate label sizes based on bottle/container dimensions, packaging requirements, and production specifications, partnering with Engineering and Operations as needed.
Packaging Systems, Standards & Governance
- Establish and maintain disciplined standards for file naming, version control, artwork archiving, production-file organization, and artwork history to ensure traceability and clear identification of current approved artwork.
- Own packaging artwork through established Change Management and project-management systems, including ETQ and Wrike, ensuring work is properly routed, documented, approved, and released.
- Partner with the cross-functional teams to continuously improve the end-to-end packaging workflow and clarify ownership, handoffs, approvals, and quality-control checkpoints.
- Develop and maintain production standards, templates, mechanical requirements, proofing protocols, file structures, and documentation that support a consistent and scalable packaging program.
- Serve as the organization's subject-matter expert for packaging production artwork, providing guidance to internal teams on mechanical development, prepress, print, and production requirements.
- Support larger packaging initiatives, portfolio updates, and brand evolution as needed while maintaining ownership of ongoing business-as-usual packaging needs
Cross-Functional Partnership & Prioritization
- Act as a central packaging production partner across Creative, Quality, Regulatory, Legal, Operations, Engineering, Project Management, Product Marketing, and external vendors.
- Manage multiple concurrent packaging projects and shifting priorities while maintaining accuracy, timelines, and clear communication with stakeholders.
- Raise packaging risks, issues, and dependencies early and recommend practical solutions that keep work moving without compromising quality or compliance.
- Maintain current knowledge of packaging production technologies, print processes, artwork-management practices, and industry best practices.
- 15+ years of professional experience in packaging production, mechanical artwork, production design, studio production, or a related discipline, preferably supporting a large consumer product portfolio.
- Demonstrated experience working within a regulated CPG environment with complex packaging development, review, and approval processes; food, beverage, nutrition, supplements, wellness, OTC, or similarly regulated categories strongly preferred.
- Supplement and nutritional product experience highly preferred, including familiarity with regulated labels, claims, ingredient information, and Supplement Facts panels.
- Demonstrated experience managing production artwork across high-volume portfolios with multiple SKUs, packaging formats, variants, and/or international markets.
- Expert-level proficiency in Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat, and Photoshop, with mastery of production artwork and prepress practices.
- Advanced knowledge of packaging mechanical development, including dielines, typography, image resolution, bleeds, trapping, separations, spot colors, print specifications, UPC barcodes, and production file preparation.
- Strong working knowledge of major packaging print and production processes and experience partnering directly with printers, converters, prepress houses, packaging suppliers, and production agencies.
- Experience operating within formal regulatory, legal, and quality review and approval environments and with workflow systems such as ETQ, Wrike, Workfront, or similar platforms.
- Strong understanding of artwork-management practices, including version control, asset management, proofing, approval workflows, file release, and archival requirements.
- Exceptional attention to detail, organizational skills, and judgment, with the ability to manage multiple concurrent projects and determine when artwork is ready to advance to review or production.
- Strong verbal and written communication skills with the ability to translate requirements among creative, regulatory, quality, technical, operational, and external production stakeholders.
- Systems-oriented mindset with the ability to balance immediate production execution with development of scalable, long-term packaging processes
- Competitive compensation
- 100% company-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance coverage for employees
- Company-paid short- and long-term disability insurance
- Company- paid life insurance
- 401k plan with employer matching contributions up to 4%
- Gym membership reimbursement
- Monthly allowance of Thorne supplements
- Paid time off, volunteer time off and holiday leave
- Training, professional development, and career growth opportunities