Senior Quality Engineer

Job Description

Job Description

About Us:

Based in Berkeley, CA, UPSIDE Foods grows meat, poultry, and seafood directly from real animal cells. These products are not vegan or vegetarian—they are delicious meat, made without the need to raise and slaughter billions of animals. In doing so, the company aims to address some of the most pressing environmental, animal welfare, and public health challenges, while still giving people the meat they love.

Founded as the world's first cultivated meat company in 2015, UPSIDE Foods (formerly Memphis Meats) has achieved numerous industry-defining milestones, including being the first company to produce multiple species of meat (beef, chicken, and duck) and to sell a cultivated meat product in the United States. The company believes that people shouldn't have to choose between the foods they love and a thriving planet, and is working to build a better food system with access to delicious, humane, and sustainable meat, poultry, and seafood.

UPSIDE Foods has won various industry awards, including New York Times' Good Tech Awards, FastCo's Next Big Thing in Tech and World Changing Ideas Awards, and the Best and Brightest Companies to Work For in the Nation by the National Association for Business Resources. UPSIDE Foods has raised more than $600 million in funding from a diverse group of leading U.S. and global investors, including top-tier venture capital firms, sovereign investment funds, strategic food and agriculture partners, and prominent technology and sustainability investors.

About This Job:

The Senior Quality Engineer will play a key strategic role in helping with defining, establishing, and enforcing the food safety and quality systems that will come to define cultivated meat food production, processing, and packaging processes required to ensure safe and delicious meat food products for consumers as we continue to scale.

The Senior Quality Engineer will be responsible for ensuring appropriate methods are strategically integrated into the plant goals, taking long- and short-term views on product quality and food safety as products, processes, and company priorities are developed as it relates to the FSQA lab, plant testing and plant HACCP/Preventive Controls/ISO9001 monitoring. This role is a key leadership position, aiding in company precedent for scaled cultivated meat quality and food safety. This role will be a part of a world-class quality management team. The ideal candidate is eager to take on new challenges, is not afraid to fail and is willing to identify mistakes and learn from them.

The Senior Quality Engineer will be expected to drive continuous improvement in the areas of compliance in food safety, quality, regulatory, sanitation and corporate standards. This includes participating in the innovation process to ensure completed quality and food safety risk analysis and validation of compliance documentation are maintained.

Responsibilities Include:

• Aid in the design and implementation of a Food Safety & Quality Management System that will be a critical pillar of manufacturing cultivated meat and an example for this new way of making food.
• Oversee and collaborate with, R&D staff and Regulatory team. The FSQA team is responsible for analytical labs, maintenance of lab and plant floor equipment and calibration programs, day to day oversight of testing outlined in the plant Food Safety and HACCP plans, regulatory compliance, kosher, organic, halal, etc. certifications, label applications and compliance with various customer quality and food safety programs and overall administration of the plant food safety and quality systems.
• Support the checkout, start-up, commissioning and validation of the plant and labs.
• Acts as the subject matter expert on behalf of the organization for Food Safety and Quality and day-to-day issues at the plant.
• Assist in the management of supplier quality program, including document review, auditing and trials.
• Guide a Food Safety & Quality team that is results oriented and driven to serve their internal and external customers while developing and implementing regulatory strategy and managing those systems and programs in order to meet all corporate goals and objectives.
• Demonstrable ability to support both FDA and USDA relationships, inspection regimens, post-market compliance plans, adverse event reporting, and label approval processes associated with the plant.
• Design various components of an ISO9001 system, including quality plans, risk and opportunities assessments, R&R gauge studies, root cause analysis, and other supporting functions of the QMS.

About You:

• 5+ years experience in food manufacturing.
• Excellent people management skills as well as experience in the management of food safety, quality systems and technical services functions.
• Ability to set challenging, reasonable performance expectations for analytical testing performance, microbiological performance, FSMA/HACCP/HARPC programs, (PCQI certification preferred).
• Experience and working knowledge of continuous improvement processes as well as the ability to effectively collaborate with company leadership at suppliers and customers.
• Experience developing/implementing GFSI programs including: lab validation, Supplier Management, Sanitation/Pre-OP, Internal & External Auditing, CAPA/Root Cause Analysis, Document Control, Crisis Management, Customer Complaints, Environmental Monitoring, Food Defense, Food Fraud and Allergen Management.
• A deeply technical background that can easily translate evidence into action.
• A collaborative nature that works well independently and with others.
• A willingness to work with teammates to build a healthy professional environment to produce delicious, safe meat products.

Compensation Range : $125,000 - $170,000*

*Pay may vary depending on factors including job-related knowledge and skills.

UPSIDE Benefits!

• Stock options for all full-time incoming team members!
• 83-100% employer-paid healthcare premiums for team members (medical [including HSA and FSA], dental, and vision)
• Pet insurance for your furry family members!
• Unlimited PTO
• Employee Engagement Council
• Company-sponsored learning & development opportunities

UPSIDE Foods is an equal opportunity employer and we value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. Our company-wide mission is to create a product for everyone, so we are deeply committed to having teams and leaders that reflect this mission.