Quality Assurance Technician in Huntingdon

As we continue our mission to make people and nature happy through reinventing chocolate, we’re looking for a Quality Assurance Technician to join our Technical Team on a permanent basis. As a Quality Assurance Technician, you will be responsible for ensuring compliance against all tasks related to food safety, food safety culture, quality, legality, and integrity of Hotel Chocolat products across production and packing functions.

This role is a fantastic opportunity to learn all about the wonderful world of chocolate! You will play a vital part in ensuring that all our products continue to be made to the highest quality standards that Hotel Chocolat is regarded for. You will also be responsible for the completion of all food safety and quality audits, always ensuring legal compliance and confidently escalating non-conformances. Driving improvement to the quality management system and the Hotel Chocolat ways of working where required.

Shift Pattern: this role will operate on a rotating weekly shift pattern of 6am – 2pm and 2pm – 10pm, Monday to Friday.

As well as a competitive salary and a range of company benefits including enhanced maternity and paternity leave and Company pension contributions, you’ll receive 50% discount on all products, and a 70% discount for you and your guests when you stay at our Rabot Estate hideaway on the paradise island of Saint Lucia.

The onsite location for this role is at our Factory ‘Hadley Park’, in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, right in the heart of where our chocolates are made and where weekly, we can produce between 4 to 6 million of the chocolates we all know and love. Hadley Park is just 5 minutes off the A141 and 1.3 miles from Huntingdon train station, with direct rail links to London King’s Cross.

What you’ll be doing:

• Participate in sensory panels upon completing sensory training.
• Conducting daily taste panels to provide our broader teams with a snapshot of recent manufacturing successes.
• Conduct equipment verification checks to ensure compliance.
• Investigating complaints and writing corresponding reports.
• Non-conformance management.
• Driving improvement through meticulous record keeping and management.
• Ownership of the visual quality message throughout the manufacturing site.
• Collecting and sending all samples for analysis, including swabs, water, and finished products, according to schedule.
• Reporting OOS results and leading investigations including root cause analysis where required.
• Maintaining the positive release system.
• Building relationships and striving for a positive food safety culture with your peers.
• Traceability and retain sample management.
• Attend daily production meetings / Data collection for meetings.
• Completion of food safety validations including allergens and CCP’s.
• Allergen verification / Temperature monitoring and reporting.
• Pest control visits and recommendation management.
• In addition, this role may be asked to complete further tasks to support the wider Technical Department that are not detailed here.
• This role may also be called upon to deputise for the site quality manager when required.

Who you are:

• Food Safety Level 2.
• Good verbal and written English.
• Proven experience as a subject matter expert (SME) for Quality.
• Experience of training.
• Knowledge and experience in chocolate production and confectionery products.

We’re one of the UK’s favourite premium chocolate brands, with a range of products spanning luxury gifts, alcohol and our pioneering drinking chocolate system, the Velvetiser™. A cacao pod takes years to grow – it can’t be rushed if it’s going to be just right for our products. The same can be said for Hotel Chocolat, which originally started as a mint production company before we realised it was luxury chocolate that we were really passionate about. Now, we’re market leaders in the industry. What began as an online-only business grew to over 100 stores across the UK, and we’re still growing… Today, we’re multi-category, multi-channel, and multi-territory, and our customers, colleagues, cacao farmers and suppliers all benefit from the success we make together.