Sr. Quality Assurance Supervisor

Sr. Quality Assurance Supervisor

Location: Saint Gabriel, Louisiana Work Type: Fully Onsite The Sr. Quality Assurance Supervisor will lead the site's Quality and Food Safety programs, ensuring all products meet Balchem, customer, and regulatory standards. This role involves developing and maintaining quality systems, leading audit readiness, ensuring compliance with FDA and GFSI standards, and driving continuous improvement initiatives across the site. The role partners closely with Operations, R&D, Supply Chain, and Commercial teams to ensure consistent quality performance and a strong culture of food safety and compliance.

Essential Functions:

• Execution and Maintenance Quality, Food Safety and Food Quality Programs: Partners with the site food quality and food safety teams to actively apply living Food Safety, Food Quality plans and the prerequisite programs. Utilizes operational excellence processes as a platform to drive priorities and change. Maintains site in audit ready state.
• Prioritizing Compliance, KPI's, Operational Excellence: Responsible for performance and KPIs through auditing, execution, follow-ups. Demonstrates ability to prioritize and bring visibility to non-conformances and key drivers impacting KPI's, assign actions to contain, correct, prevent. Drives root cause analysis, quality commercialization reviews including specification reviews. Incorporates operational excellence in to ways of working.
• Talent Management and Development for Quality, and Food Safety Teams Provides technical expertise and is accountable for a high functioning quality team. Partners with cross functional groups to ensure structured onboarding is implemented cross functionally at site. Ensures ongoing training is structured to drive success.
• Escalated Issue Management Responsible for ensuring food safety and quality, and or customer issues are escalated for visibility and for resources.
• Establishes a Culture of Quality and Systems Drives the adoption of systems tools and skill development within the function. Uses tools to drive Quality Culture initiatives at the sites,
• Partnership with site leaders and cross functional partners for goal setting, decision-making alignment, and training and development needs
• Supports Supply Chain, Learning and Development, and Commercialization functions as needed.

People:

• Responsible for development and performance of the site quality team
• Builds strong cross functional relationships and demonstrates ability to effectively influence site strategy & execution
• Develops a culture that drives quality improvements and efficiently interfaces with operational excellence processes
• Deliver and keep current training programs focused on food safety and quality.
• Communicate effectively with internal and external customers.
• Timely escalation and communication of food safety, quality, financial issues
• Effectively cascade goals using tools such as SMART goals. Aligns with teams on standard work.
• Motivates and builds team strength

Systems:

• Responsible for the effective application of site Product Safety, Product Quality and prerequisite systems. Ensure these systems effectively interface with change control and commercialization processes.
• Strong ability to root cause issues and prevent recurrence via persistent pursuit of higher hierarchical levels of control than administrative, including but not limited to formula, engineering, and elimination strategies.
• Responsible for applying an effective internal audit program and that corrective actions are completed
• Brings visibility to priorities that have largest positive impact on key performance indicators and metrics including but not limited to; Inspection/Compliance performance, First Pass Quality, Complaints, Disposals, Inventory Health, Customer Responsiveness, CAPA closure and effectiveness, systems performance, environmental & sanitation performance.
• Ensures that response to customers, inspectors and auditors are professional, timely, and in scope.
• Collaborates with R&D, Production, and commercial teams in the development and preparation for production of new Products, Processes, and Equipment to support new product/customer launches. Ensuring the process quantifies the probability of success and clearly communicates the risks and proposed mitigations as an outcome of first-time makes.
• Interface with operational excellence programs to maximize effectiveness
• Leads preparation for customer visits and external audit.
• Ability to become site power user for ERP & LIMS systems.

Knowledge & Experience:

• Operated in an FDA regulated environment, ideally food or dietary supplement
• Assess and mitigate food safety, regulatory, and cost risks.
• Apply sanitation principles effectively.
• Effective project manager that knows how to prioritize and meet deadlines
• Execution of CAPA and Customer Complaint system.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in a relevant scientific or technical field (Food Science, Microbiology, Chemistry, etc.).
• Experience in Quality Assurance, Food Safety, or Manufacturing within a food, nutrition, or pharmaceutical industry.
• Working knowledge of FDA, GFSI (SQF, BRC), and food safety regulations.
• Experience in Project Management and Change Management .
• Strong understanding of CAPA, Root Cause Analysis, and audit processes .
• PCQI certification preferred.
• Proven ability to lead teams, manage quality systems, and drive compliance initiatives.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and interpersonal communication skills.