Technical Lead

At Europe Snacks, we want to be a great place to work. We do that by making sure our values of Entrepreneurship, Excellence and Care sit at the heart of everything we do. We’re now looking for a Technical Leader to join our Leicester site and help drive food safety, quality, hygiene and compliance performance across the business.

This is a fantastic opportunity for an experienced technical professional who enjoys working in a fast-paced food manufacturing environment and wants to make a genuine impact. As Technical Leader, you’ll be part of the day-based Technical Team, supporting departmental objectives and site performance targets. You’ll play a key role in maintaining compliance, driving standards, coaching others, supporting investigations and helping to embed continuous improvement across the factory.

• Food safety, quality and compliance
• Support compliance activity across site and help drive corrective actions through to completion
• Lead and maintain traceability routine testing
• Review and police line paperwork to ensure adherence and completion in real time
• Ensure lines are positively released back to production using defined swabbing schemes through QATs
• Carry out audits to schedule, including glass and hard plastic, bait box, GMP and internal audits
• Ensure site adherence to customer-specific quality assurance standards
• Conduct and analyse QA board testing and trending to identify key areas for improvement
• Ensure raw materials have approved specifications and packaging film is signed off before launches
• Leadership and people
• Work across all shifts to ensure employees understand and follow best practice
• Coach and mentor QAT and QC staff to improve standards and capability
• Educate and promote food safety and technical standards across operational teams
• Lead by example on safe working practices and expected behaviours
• Build strong relationships with internal stakeholders, customers and auditors
• Customer, reporting and issue management
• Understand the main issues impacting your area during the previous 24 hours
• Report NCRs daily and support closure of actions
• Communicate quality or compliance concerns promptly to shift management and the wider management team
• Support customer quality control visits and liaise professionally where required
• Continuous improvement and problem solving
• Take corrective action where product is not meeting specification
• Support and lead root cause analysis to prevent repeat issues
• Escalate recurring issues appropriately
• Be actively involved in continuous improvement projects and quality initiatives
• Help develop SOPs, manuals, procedures and defined standards to improve consistency and performance
• Hygiene, safety and site standards
• Maintain strong food safety and health and safety standards within your area
• Ensure PPE is worn correctly at all times
• Ensure equipment is cleaned in line with relevant CICs and SOPs and that the QA Lab is kept clean
• Drive site hygiene standards, including supporting the creation and training of cleaning cards alongside the Hygiene Supervisor
• Take part in weekly GMP audits with Area and Shift Managers
• Carry out regular line walks to identify foreign body risks and hygiene improvement opportunities
• Support supply and replenishment of chemicals, consumables and waste management to avoid shortages

To be successful in this role, you’ll need to be a credible and proactive technical professional who can build trust, influence others and stay calm under pressure. You’ll likely have:

• Experience in a technical, QA or food safety role within food manufacturing
• Good working knowledge of GMP, HACCP, traceability and internal auditing
• Experience supporting corrective actions, investigations and root cause analysis
• The confidence to challenge standards constructively and hold the line where needed
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills
• A collaborative approach and the ability to work effectively across departments and shifts
• Strong IT skills, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint
• Report-writing experience, ideally including technical specifications and complaint investigations
• Literacy/Numeracy to National Standard Level 2
• Level 3 Food Hygiene
• Level 3 HACCP
• Train the Trainer qualification

We’re looking for someone who:

• Leads with credibility, maturity and calmness under pressure
• Gives timely, constructive feedback and communicates openly
• Works collaboratively while knowing when to support, challenge or push back
• Is resilient, adaptable and positive about change
• Can inspire others through encouragement, support and high standards
• Brings energy, initiative and an improvement-focused mindset
• Champions equality, diversity and inclusion
• Embodies customer focus and follows through on commitments
• Is passionate about technical leadership and continuous improvement

This is more than a technical role, it’s an opportunity to influence standards, support people, and help shape the future of quality and food safety on site. You’ll join a values-led business where your contribution matters and where you’ll have the chance to make a visible difference every day.