Job Overview
The Director, Corporate Food Safety & Quality is accountable for enterprise-wide food safety, quality, sanitation and audit readiness across High Liner Foods. This role establishes the standards, governance, routines, and expectations required to consistently meet regulatory, customer, GFSI, and internal requirements. As a functional leader, the Director must navigate the organization effectively, influence cross-functional partners, and align corporate and plant teams around clear priorities, measurable outcomes, and disciplined execution. This person will be a quality champion and active agent of food safety and quality cultural change, advocating for the protection of High Liner Foods, our customers, and our consumers.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities
- Leads the enterprise food safety, quality, and sanitation strategy, establishing standards, priorities, governance routines, and performance expectations aligned with High Liner Foods’ strategic plan.
- Serves as the corporate authority for food safety, quality, sanitation, audit readiness, and risk mitigation across all manufacturing sites.
- Establishes enterprise and site-level accountabilities for regulatory, customer, GFSI, and internal requirements; verifies execution through metrics, internal audits, management review, and CAPA follow-up.
- Ensures effective prerequisite programs and food safety systems, including HACCP/food safety plans, sanitation, environmental monitoring, allergen control, pest control, document control, and verification activities.
- Engages cross-functional stakeholders across Operations, Regulatory, R&D, Supply Chain, Commercial, and Senior Leadership to support aligned execution of the HLF FSQA strategy, standards, and programs.
- Identifies, escalates, and mitigates food safety, quality, sanitation, regulatory, and customer risks using data, trend analysis, root cause thinking, and sustainable corrective and preventive actions.
- Leads readiness for regulatory, customer, third-party, and internal audits, ensuring responses are timely, sustainable, and designed to prevent recurrence.
- Defines and monitors enterprise KPIs for audit performance, sanitation effectiveness, environmental monitoring, customer complaints, specification compliance, nonconformances, product holds, and right-first-time performance.
- Provides senior leadership with clear visibility to risk, performance, resource needs, and improvement priorities through routine reporting, issue escalation, and action tracking.
Continuous Improvement
- Leads enterprise continuous improvement for food safety, quality, and sanitation by using data, audit results, customer feedback, nonconformance trends, and plant performance to prioritize actions, eliminate recurring issues, and verify sustained improvements.
- Drives standardization of best practices across sites while ensuring local execution is practical, owned, and effective.
- Uses disciplined problem solving, root cause analysis, and change management to improve process capability, reduce product variability, strengthen sanitation performance, and improve specification and customer compliance.
Leadership
- Champions a strong, proactive, and sustainable food safety and quality culture through influence, accountability, and disciplined execution across corporate and plant teams.
- Models sound judgment, urgency, transparency, and a bias for action while ensuring food safety, regulatory, quality, and customer requirements are never compromised.
- Develops high-performing corporate and plant food safety, quality, and sanitation leaders through coaching, performance management, succession planning, and capability building.
- Creates an environment of respect, trust, collaboration, and accountability while constructively challenging teams to improve standards, systems, and execution.
- Establishes and manages the functional budget with fiscal discipline, ensuring resources are aligned to risk, compliance, capability, and business priorities.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Food Science, Microbiology, Biology, Chemistry, Engineering, or a related technical field required; advanced degree preferred.
- 10+ years of progressive food safety, quality, sanitation, or regulatory leadership experience in food manufacturing; multi-site experience strongly preferred.
- Demonstrated expertise with HACCP/food safety plans, preventive controls/PCQI requirements, GFSI certification programs, GMPs, sanitation, environmental monitoring, allergen control, food defense, food fraud, CAPA, internal audits, regulatory inspections, and customer audits.
- Strong working knowledge of applicable FDA, USDA, CFIA, FSMA, customer, and regulatory requirements.
- Proven ability to influence senior leaders, align cross-functional stakeholders, resolve conflict, and drive execution in a matrixed organization.
- Strong analytical, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills with the ability to translate data into priorities, action plans, and measurable results.
- Excellent communication skills with the ability to clearly convey risk, expectations, decisions, and priorities at all levels of the organization.
- Highly organized, proactive, resilient, with a practical approach to execution and a history of successfully delivering and improving results in dynamic manufacturing environments.
- Travel required, approximately 35% within North America.
Vacancy Status: Current Vacancy
Current employees please note: this position is referral bonus eligible! See our policy for more details.
What's in it for you?
Join High Liner Foods for a career where you shape your path, backed by great benefits, flexible work, and a culture of diversity, innovation, and sustainability. Immerse yourself in opportunities to make a real impact and grow with us in our mission to nourish lives. Start your adventure where endless possibilities to thrive together await.
- Competitive Salary
- Heath, dental & vision coverage
- Pay for performance incentives
- Employee & Family assistance programs
- Wellness Programs
- Retirement Planning
- Supplemental Parental Leaves
- Disability Support
- Family friendly Flex policies & Summer hours
- Volunteer hours
- Learning and mentorship opportunities
- Safety focused work environment
About High Liner Foods
Founded in 1899 in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, High Liner Foods has grown from a small salt fish company into a leading North American processor and marketer of value-added frozen seafood. Our trusted brands — including High Liner, Fisher Boy, Mirabel, Sea Cuisine, C.Wirthy & Co, Mrs. Paul’s, Van de Kamp’s, and Icelandic Seafood — are enjoyed by families, restaurants, and institutions across Canada and the United States.
Guided by our purpose of Reimagining Seafood to Nourish Life, we combine over a century of expertise with innovation, consumer insight, and responsible practices to deliver high-quality seafood people can trust.
At High Liner Foods, we are a people-first organization. We invest in our employees through development opportunities, collaborative teamwork, and a culture where safety, well-being, and growth are priorities. Whether in our offices, plants, or distribution teams, our people work together to deliver excellence and drive the future of seafood.
Our Values
Serve with Purpose – We put our customers and consumers at the heart of everything we do, creating quality products that help to nourish lives and foster connections that go beyond the plate.
Do the Right Thing – We lead with integrity, act responsibly, and make choices that support our people, our partners, and our planet. .
Innovate & Reimagine – We challenge the norm, embrace fresh ideas, and turn innovation into impact.
All Hands on Deck – Powered by people and driven by purpose, we lead with courage, hold one another accountable, and celebrate as a team
Ready to make waves with us? Join High Liner Foods and help shape the future of seafood.
To learn more please visit our Career (https://www.highlinerfoods.com/careers)/LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/high-liner-foods/life/1912d874-96c4-46ea-9926-6b046d103a17/?viewAsMember=true)/Indeed (https://ca.indeed.com/cmp/High-Liner-Foods/about) page
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