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Director of Food Safety & Quality Assurance (FSQA)

Meat & Poultry Manufacturing — Co-Manufacturer Compliance & Regulatory Affairs

Location: REMOTE – Chicago preferred; open to candidates centrally located or near a major airport hub

Travel: Roughly 2x/month to co-manufacturer sites across the Midwest (IN, MI, MO, UT and surrounding areas)

Compensation: $180-190k base + bonus structure, based on experience

Reports to: To be confirmed with the hiring manager

Team: Newly created, third branch within the Quality organization; likely 1–3 direct reports, including a Manager of Regulatory & Quality Systems and an FSQA intern (structure still being finalized)

Required

• 10-15 years of progressive food safety and quality assurance experience within the meat and poultry industry, including direct USDA regulatory exposure
• Proven experience auditing and managing co-manufacturer or third-party manufacturing relationships, including building 30/60/90-day corrective action plans for underperforming sites
• Experience building and scaling a QA/food safety function at a company that grew through a similar stage, ideally somewhere in the $500M to $1B revenue range while you were there. We're looking for someone who lived through that growth and helped build the function as the company scaled, not someone who joined after the infrastructure was already in place. Comfortable 'building the plane while flying it.
• Working knowledge of ERP systems (NetSuite experience a plus) and food safety/quality management platforms
• Demonstrated ability to hold the line on standards while remaining genuinely cross-functional and collaborative, not siloed
• Willingness to travel roughly 2x/month to co-manufacturer sites across the Midwest

Nice to Have

• HACCP, PCQI, SQF, or BRC-related certifications
• Experience in a founder-led or entrepreneurial, fast-scaling CPG environment
• Background specifically in chicken or beef protein manufacturing
• Bachelor’s degree in Food Science, Microbiology, or a related field (hands-on experience matters more than the degree itself)

The Opportunity

Our client is one of the fastest-growing meat snack brands in the country, a minority-owned, family-operated, B Corp-certified company built around real, clean-label ingredients: grass-fed beef and venison, and antibiotic-free turkey and chicken, with zero added sugar, artificial preservatives, or fillers. The brand has scaled from a small team to a fast-growing national presence on shelves at major retailers nationwide, and it's on a clear path toward significant continued revenue growth.

That growth has outpaced the internal Quality team's bandwidth, and this newly created Director of FSQA role exists to fix that. This is a build-from-scratch seat: the person who takes it will stand up a third branch within the Quality organization dedicated specifically to regulatory compliance and co-manufacturer oversight, something the company has never had a dedicated leader for before.

What You'll Do

• Own food safety and quality compliance across the company's growing network of co-manufacturer sites (currently 8–9, with more coming online), ensuring every site meets USDA requirements and the company's own standards
• Travel to sites regularly to conduct audits, assess performance, and build 30–90 day improvement plans for any site that's falling short
• Partner cross-functionally with Operations, Supply Chain, and other teams to make sure quality and compliance are built into decisions from the start, not bolted on after the fact
• Own the systems side of the job, working within the company's ERP and other quality/compliance platforms to keep records audit-ready
• Build out the team underneath this role as the company continues to scale, including hiring and developing a regulatory/quality systems manager
• Be the person in the room who protects the brand's safety standards, even when it isn't the easy or cheap choice; this is a company that has voluntarily pulled product over standards no regulator required

Why This Role Is Different

Most Director of FSQA roles ask someone to maintain an existing system. This one is different: there's no team to inherit and no established playbook, because this function has never existed here in a dedicated way. The person who takes this role gets a rare kind of ownership, defining what “good” looks like for food safety and compliance at a brand that is scaling fast and still building critical infrastructure as it grows. If you want to build something real rather than manage what's already there, this is that kind of seat.

The Culture

This is a mission-driven team that takes both its product and its people seriously. The culture prizes people who are nimble, resourceful, and persistent, team players who take ownership, dig into details, and go the extra mile without needing to be asked twice. Standards matter enormously here, but so does collaboration: this isn't a company looking for a compliance enforcer who operates in a silo. They want someone who can hold the line on safety while still being a genuine partner to the teams around them.