Are you a senior technical professional with strong retailer and supplier-facing experience, ready to take ownership of food safety, compliance, and customer delivery at a strategic level?

This is a high-impact role sitting across both retail and industry supply chains, with responsibility for driving food safety culture, managing key customer and supplier relationships, and ensuring technically robust, right-first-time product delivery. You’ll be involved early in new product launches, act as a senior technical contact during critical incidents, and play a key role in governance, audits, and ethical compliance.

You will be responsible for, but not limited to:

• Championing food safety culture across retail and industry-facing business units
• Managing and supporting retail-facing technical resources
• Early involvement in new product launches to ensure customer timelines are achieved, including specifications, artwork approval, nutrition, microbiological testing, shelf-life, and validations
• Conducting post-launch reviews including consistency panels and benchmarking
• Owning the completion and ongoing maintenance of customer specifications and artworks
• Acting as the technical lead for customers, ensuring requirements are understood and delivered through portals, questionnaires, KPIs, audits, and responses
• Supporting and maintaining the Business Management System, including HACCP, internal audits, corrective actions, traceability, allergen management, and crisis procedures
• Managing supplier approval through documentation review and audit where appropriate
• Providing technical management of suppliers to ensure customer, legal, and internal standards are met
• Maintaining accurate data across internal systems and customer portals
• Acting as the primary technical escalation point in the event of non-conforming products
• Leading complaint investigations and monitoring trends
• Measuring, monitoring, and reporting technical KPIs across business units
• Risk-based monitoring of key suppliers
• Leading ethical trade compliance activity, including SEDEX and wider human rights considerations
• Ensuring sustainability, animal welfare, and responsible sourcing standards are understood and implemented in line with customer and legal requirements

What’s required?

• Proven experience in retail technical management, either within a retailer or retail supplier environment
• Industry technical management experience within food manufacturing or supply
• Strong knowledge of food safety hazards including microbiology, allergens, chemistry, and foreign materials
• In-depth experience with food safety systems, including HACCP
• Working knowledge of BRC Food Safety standards (essential); experience with Agents & Brokers or ISO standards desirable
• Confident managing customer portals, specifications, and technical documentation
• Experience supporting audits, traceability exercises, and crisis management
• Strong stakeholder management skills across customers, suppliers, and internal teams
• Detail-oriented, organised, and comfortable working across multiple priorities in a hybrid role

What’s in it for you?

A senior, influential technical role offering hybrid working, broad customer and supplier exposure, and the opportunity to shape food safety, compliance, and ethical standards across complex supply chains.

Do you think you fit the criteria?
Want to find out more about the role?

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