Product Safety Lead

Food Safety And Merchandise Quality Lead

This role leads the onboarding and qualification of new suppliers and manufacturing sites for retail food and merchandise products, ensuring they meet rigorous food safety, GMP, and quality standards. The position provides technical and quality oversight across packaging and a wide range of consumer merchandise categories, partnering closely with cross-functional teams to deliver safe, compliant, and robust products to market while maintaining strong work-life balance and meaningful local partnerships.

• Lead the onboarding and qualification of new suppliers and manufacturing sites to ensure compliance with food safety, GMP, and merchandise quality requirements.
• Conduct and coordinate risk assessments, audits, and readiness evaluations for new and existing suppliers and manufacturing locations.
• Collaborate closely with R&D and Merch Development teams to define material, process, and performance qualification standards for packaging and merchandise.
• Ensure packaging solutions are robust, fit for use, and compliant prior to commercialization by providing quality oversight during pilot runs, scale-ups, and first production.
• Identify quality and safety gaps early in development and drive corrective and preventive actions to minimize downstream risk to retail operations.
• Assess manufacturing process capability, including Cp/Cpk, control plans, and validation activities, to confirm suppliers can consistently produce high-quality merchandise before full-scale manufacturing.
• Act as a trusted quality advisor on innovation governance, balancing speed-to-market goals with a strong commitment to product safety, quality, and customer trust.
• Apply in-depth technical knowledge to projects and gather insights through testing and supplier/product assessments across a wide variety of merchandising materials and items, including toys, textiles, drinkware, accessories, and other consumer products.
• Assist with obtaining and coordinating product samples for analysis and testing to support safety and quality evaluations.
• Proactively analyze product and supplier quality signals, metrics, audit data, customer feedback, regulator input, and workgroup insights to identify trends and emerging risks.
• Lead investigations and drive resolution of merchandise and consumer product-related concerns raised by regulators, retail stores, field QA partners, or internal and external customers.
• Interface with and influence suppliers and cross-functional teams, including internationally based partners, to deliver results within demanding timelines.
• Act as a retail food merchandise product safety and quality system expert in the development of new merchandise initiatives and operating practices.
• Track product-level testing and work with suppliers to collect and review test data points and documentation.
• Maintain and monitor product supplier testing records to ensure ongoing compliance with safety and quality standards.
• Work collaboratively across multiple cross-functional teams while also operating autonomously to manage priorities and deliverables.
• Support continuous improvement of quality systems, processes, and documentation related to food safety and merchandise quality.

• 3–5 years of experience in quality assurance, food safety systems, or related product safety roles.
• Hands-on experience with basic laboratory practices and product safety testing.
• Experience working with merchandising and multi-category consumer products such as toys, textiles, drinkware, accessories, ornaments, and other retail merchandise.
• Strong understanding of packaging quality and performance requirements.
• Knowledge of food safety systems and quality assurance principles, including HACCP.
• Ability to assess manufacturing process capability, including interpretation of Cp/Cpk, control plans, and validation activities.
• Demonstrated ability to analyze product and supplier quality metrics, audit data, and customer feedback to identify trends and risks.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to interface and influence suppliers and cross-functional teams, including international partners.
• High attention to detail in reviewing test data, documentation, and quality records.
• Ability to work both collaboratively across multiple teams and autonomously with minimal supervision.
• Capability to test and evaluate products for safety and compliance across multiple categories.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office Suite and basic computer skills.
• Ability to manage multiple projects and timelines in a fast-paced, cross-functional environment.

• Experience with food packaging development, qualification, and performance testing.
• Background in textile and garment products, including quality and safety considerations.
• Experience with merchandise such as cups, plates, bottles, drinkware, toys, ornaments, and similar consumer products.
• Familiarity with food safety systems and HACCP methodologies.
• Process improvement…