Senior Research Scientist QRC

Job Location: Hershey, PA 
 


Role Summary: 

Provide microbiological Subject Matter Expert (SME) support to the manufacturing and co-manufacturing plants, supplier quality management (SQM), R&D, and the micro service team.

Responsibilities: 

1. Partner with micro team, regional QRC and/or plant QA staff to troubleshooting complex micro incidents in micro lab, manufacturing environments and/or with products. Coach technicians or other lab team members for development in this area. 2. Review and trend the environmental microbiological monitoring program (EMMP) and product testing results and provide holistically recommendations. Support in EMMP CAPA processes. 3. Continuously review and improve micro related policies, standards, and procedures based on evolving of food micro landscape, industry and regulatory directions, and lessons learned internally and externally. 4. Provide technical support for microbiological risk assessments of new ingredients and evaluate adequacy of thermal validation studies and risk assessment provided by the supplier. 5. Support R&D & innovation QA team for microbiological food safety risk evaluations for new products and processes. 6. Effectively collaborate with cross-functional teams and client group to provide SME support in solving microbiological issues.

Knowledges, Skills & Abilities: 

• A robust working technical knowledge of food microbiology and food science  processes and/or instrumentation to identify and recommend control and/or monitoring techniques for food safety and quality
• Experience in conducting failure analysis and root cause investigation.
• Superior working knowledge of regulatory and quality system requirements –HACCP, HARPC, Good Manufacturing Process (GMP), Sanitation principles, etc.

Experience & Education: 

• M.S. in Food Microbiology, Food Science, or related science field.
• 3+ years of manufacturing plant and microbiology laboratory experience handling microbiological root cause analyses & Environmental Microbiological Monitoring Programs