Director of Quality and Food Safety

Director of Quality and Food Safety

New York, NY, Columbus, OH *or Remote*

Director of Quality and Food Safety

New York, NY / Remote (FT)

ABOUT BARK

Here at BARK, we love dogs and their people. We’re looking to make all dogs happy throughout the entire world (we’re not kidding). Think Disney for dogs — we make magic for dogs and their people through our products, events, and experiences.

Our ambition level is high, the opportunity is huge, and our love for dogs is through the roof! We launched in 2011 with BarkBox, a monthly-themed subscription of all-natural treats and clever toys. Since then, we’ve shipped more than 70 million toys and treats to dogs across the world and use all of that direct customer feedback to inform new initiatives and ways to make magic between dogs and their people. We’ve since expanded into other offerings as well, as we aim to become THE Dog Company for every family with a four-legged, belly-scratch-loving, interspecies family member.

WHO ARE WE?

The Sourcing team helps to take our unique designs and transform them into products to sell to our customers with the help of our third-party manufacturing partners. Internally, we partner closely with the R&D and Supply Chain teams in order to give dogs and their people the best experience possible. If you couldn’t tell already, we’re dog and customer-obsessed – we pay close attention to cost and quality, are highly flexible and entrepreneurial, and collaborative to a fault.

WHO WE’RE SNIFFIN’ FOR

The role Director of Quality and Food Safety will play a critical role in delivering BARK’s mission of making the world a better place for all dogs and all families, ensuring that all of BARK’s consumable products sold across multiple channels (retail, subscription and e-commerce) are safe, compliant, and reliable. You will lead and provide technical direction in meeting BARK’s quality, food safety and compliance objectives. In this role, you will partner with a range of cross-functional teams including R&D, Sourcing, and Operations. Additionally, you will partner closely with our manufacturing partners. This role will build strong foundational safety and quality capabilities across the supply chain that provides a strong platform for future growth and development into new markets and business channels, allowing BARK to scale and meet our strategic vision. The Director of Quality and Food Safety will hire, train, and develop a team of motivated safety and quality managers, designing and building new models that are focused on reliability, performance and cost.

The successful candidate will work cross-functionally to navigate challenges, have an ability to take ownership of complex topics, dive deep on all aspects of R&D and manufacturing to understand the bigger picture for our customers and business from a safety and quality perspective. This is a senior role with high visibility within the BARK senior leadership team: you must have excellent written and verbal communications, be comfortable presenting solutions in a customer and P&L data driven approach, sharp analytical approach to understanding/solving problems, and someone who will flourish in a role with considerable autonomy and visibility.

KEY DUTIES

Design, execute and/or enhance various safety and quality processes throughout the lifecycle process of our supply chain to serve retail, subscription and e-commerce channels by performing one or more of the following duties:

• Build and own the end-to-end quality and food safety process for Bark, along with metrics to measure performance with all stakeholders
• Assure BARK meets quality, food safety, and legal compliance requirements for FSMA, AAFCO, NASC, USDA, FDA, etc.
• Collaborate with R&D and Sourcing, and our third-party manufacturing partners to oversee quality compliance
• Work with Operations to implement strong Q&FS programs at all consumables fulfillment centers
• Analyze customer feedback and performance data to incorporate into the product development lifecycle
• Closely manage corrective action process
• Oversee process for onboarding new manufacturing partners and fulfillment centers, working closely with BARK legal to establish strong agreements

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS

• Minimum 7-10+ years experience in Quality & Food Safety with pet food industry experience and at least 5 yrs in a leadership capacity
• Active training in Food Safety Modernization Act with knowledge of GMP, HACCP, ISO22000, AAFCO, USDA, FDA, NASC
• Requires Bachelor’s degree in a related-field or equivalent experience
• Experience auditing manufacturing/plants and managing supplier quality assurance
• Experience partnering effectively with geographically dispersed teams
• Strong project, product and resource management skills
• Excellent business writing and communication skills to peers and senior leadership teams
• Experience in MS Office suite of products (in particular word, excel) and PLM systems
• Data analysis savvy to aid problem-solving and drive decisions
• Thrives in a fast-paced environment

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Strong interpersonal and relationship building skills; proven ability to get results
• Strategic thinker with highly developed analytical and critical thinking abilities. Able to find and mine data to help make design strategy and road map decisions
• Leads by example, shows ownership and a strong bias for action, and holds people accountable to goals
• Comfortable with ambiguities, conflicting priorities, multicultural, matrixed environment
• The ability to travel both domestically & internationally 10-20%

This position is a full-time salaried position and can be remote. We offer health insurance for both you and your pup, 401k, wonderful team lunches, cold brew on tap, and a dog to pet anytime you wish.

Please Note: BARK requires all employees or guests entering our space to provide proof of up to date covid-19 vaccinations. Exemption and/or accommodation requests will be reviewed on a case by case basis.

FOR CO/NJ/NY BASED APPLICANTS:

• The base salary range for this position is $129,000- $160,000
• This position is eligible for equity

**This compensation range is based on BARKs good faith estimate as of the date of this posting and may be modified in the future. Actual pay for this position will depend on a variety of variables including location, travel, internal equity, experience, education, skills and expertise.