Plant Manager

Plant Manager, Food ManufacturingThis role provides overall operational leadership for a food manufacturing facility producing extruded, agglomerated, powdered, and granular food products, with responsibility for safety, quality, financial performance, and continuous improvement. The Plant Manager sets both short-term tactical plans and long-term strategic direction for the site, ensuring efficient, safe, and compliant operations while aligning with corporate strategy and growth objectives. The ideal candidate brings strong experience managing complex, regulated manufacturing environments and leading diverse leadership teams across multiple departments.Full-time, on-site in Austin, Minnesota.$150,000 to $180,000 annually, depending on experience.The Plant Manager oversees day-to-day operations across the facility, ensuring consistent performance, operational discipline, and delivery of customer commitments, while developing and executing site-level strategies aligned with production, quality, cost, and service goals. This person establishes standardized operating practices, performance metrics, and governance across the plant, and ensures production plans meet customer demand while optimizing throughput, yield, and asset utilization.On safety and compliance, the role champions a strong safety culture in line with OSHA, EPA, and process safety management (PSM) requirements, overseeing materials handling, dust control, waste management, and environmental stewardship programs. The Plant Manager leads audits, inspections, and corrective action plans related to safety, quality, and regulatory compliance, and maintains a safe working environment through consistent enforcement of safety policies and regular audits.The role directly leads the site leadership team, building leadership capability through coaching, performance management, and succession planning, and fosters collaboration across Operations, EHS, Quality, Engineering, Supply Chain, and HR to promote accountability and continuous improvement. On the asset side, the Plant Manager oversees reliability and preventive and predictive maintenance strategies, manages aging assets and spare parts planning, and partners with Engineering on plant upgrades, expansions, debottlenecking, and automation projects.The Plant Manager leads Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, or Operational Excellence initiatives across the site, drives standardization of systems and reporting, and leads change management initiatives to support growth and transformation, ensuring lessons from quality and customer performance gaps are institutionalized into plant practices. On the financial side, this person drives productivity improvements and cost reduction initiatives, including effective use of staffing, without compromising safety or quality, and supports strategic initiatives such as plant expansions, new product introductions, and process optimization.Required Qualifications:Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Chemistry, Food Science, Manufacturing, or a related field6 to 12+ years of progressive manufacturing or processing leadership experience in food manufacturingExperience leading food-regulated environments with strong safety initiativesDemonstrated success managing multiple complex manufacturing departmentsDeep understanding of employee and food safety, quality systems, and regulatory requirementsProven financial and operational acumen, including cost managementPreferred Qualifications:Experience with asset-intensive operations, R&D production coordination, and reliability-focused maintenance strategiesLean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, or Operational Excellence certification or training$150,000 to $180,000 annually, depending on experienceFull benefits packageTo apply, submit your resume for consideration.