Head Quality

This role is for one of the Weekday's clients Salary range: Rs 2500000 - Rs 4000000 (ie INR 25-40 LPA) Min Experience: 12 years Location: Gwalior JobType: full-time We are seeking a seasoned and results-driven Head of Quality to lead and oversee all aspects of Quality Assurance (QA), Quality Control (QC), and Food Safety across our manufacturing facilities. The ideal candidate will play a pivotal role in maintaining product excellence, ensuring regulatory compliance, and driving a culture of continuous improvement throughout the organization. Requirements Key Responsibilities: - Strategic Leadership: Lead the overall Quality function at the plant and corporate level, ensuring alignment of quality systems with organizational objectives. Develop and implement robust quality strategies, policies, and procedures that comply with both regulatory and customer requirements. - Food Safety Management: Establish and maintain a comprehensive Food Safety Management System (FSMS), ensuring compliance with FSSAI, ISO 22000, HACCP, BRC, and other applicable standards. Drive preventive food safety practices and lead audits to ensure process adherence across the supply chain. - Quality Assurance: Oversee the design, implementation, and monitoring of QA programs across all manufacturing operations. Ensure that raw materials, in-process checks, and finished products meet defined specifications. Partner with cross-functional teams to address deviations, non-conformities, and customer complaints with effective root cause analysis and CAPA implementation. - Quality Control: Supervise QC teams responsible for product inspection, testing, and validation. Ensure accuracy of testing methods, calibration of instruments, and reliability of analytical results. Strengthen the QC laboratory’s capabilities and ensure adherence to testing protocols and safety standards. - Plant Quality Operations: Drive quality excellence at the plant level by monitoring operational processes, ensuring adherence to GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices) and GLP (Good Laboratory Practices). Collaborate with production, maintenance, and procurement teams to achieve consistent product quality and process improvements. - Regulatory Compliance and Audits: Ensure compliance with statutory and customer-specific quality standards. Prepare and lead internal and external audits (regulatory, certification, and customer). Maintain up-to-date knowledge of changing food safety regulations and ensure proactive alignment with new requirements. - Continuous Improvement: Champion a culture of continuous improvement through training, process optimization, and implementation of best practices such as Lean Six Sigma and Kaizen. Identify opportunities to reduce waste, enhance product quality, and improve cost efficiency. - People Leadership: Lead, mentor, and develop a team of QA/QC professionals. Foster a culture of accountability, teamwork, and technical excellence within the quality department. Qualifications & Skills: - Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Food Technology, Dairy Technology, Microbiology, or related discipline. - 12–22 years of progressive experience in Quality Assurance, Quality Control, and Food Safety within the food manufacturing or FMCG sector. - Strong knowledge of HACCP, ISO 22000, FSSAI, GMP, and BRC standards. - Proven experience managing plant-level quality systems and leading cross-functional teams. - Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making abilities. - Strong communication and stakeholder management skills.