We are a growing food manufacturing business based in Sydney seeking a senior, hands-on Operations Manager with proven experience building and embedding operational systems that improve efficiency, profitability, food safety, and stock-on-hand control.
This role is for an operator who has personally implemented systems inside a food manufacturing environment, and who is comfortable working in a collaborative, performance-driven setting where constructive feedback is actively used to tighten operations.
If your background is primarily hospitality, retail, warehousing, or corporate operations, this role will not be a fit.
The Mandate
You will be accountable for stabilising, tightening, and scaling operations through practical, floor-based systems that are consistently followed.
Your responsibilities will include:
* End-to-end operational leadership across processing, packing, cold storage, and dispatch
* Designing and embedding systems covering:
1) Production planning and labour deployment
2) Product stock-on-hand accuracy, inventory discipline, and yield reconciliation
3) SOPs, workflows, and shift handovers
4) KPI visibility and daily performance management
* Driving measurable improvements in throughput, labour efficiency, yield, waste, and margin
* Owning and enforcing food safety, hygiene, traceability, and cold-chain compliance (HACCP, GMP)
* Ensuring food safety systems are understood, followed, and actively managed, not just audited
* Working constructively with ownership and leadership, seeking and applying feedback to strengthen operational performance
* Creating clear accountability across supervisors and team leaders
* Working closely with commercial teams to align production capability with customer demand
What We're Looking For (Essential)
* Proven Operations or Production leadership experience within food manufacturing
* Demonstrated experience establishing and implementing business systems that delivered:
1) Improved efficiency and profitability
2) Strong food safety compliance (HACCP, GMP)
3) Accurate stock-on-hand and inventory control
* Solid operational understanding of labour efficiency, throughput, waste, yield, and food safety frameworks
* A practical leadership style with strong floor presence
* Open to feedback and able to respond constructively, using input to refine systems and lift results
* Experience operating in environments where operational discipline had to be built or reset
* Based in Sydney or willing to relocate
* Applicants without direct food manufacturing experience, food safety ownership, or stock-on-hand management responsibility will not be considered.
What's on Offer
* OTE up to $200k, aligned to performance and delivery
* Authority to build systems properly and see them embedded
* High-trust role with visible impact on business performance
* Supportive, commercially minded ownership team
* Long-term growth opportunity as the business scales
To apply, please email your CV to, answering the following questions as a prerequisite for your application:
1) Describe a business or operational system you personally implemented in a food manufacturing environment that improved efficiency, profitability, or food safety.
Include:
* The problem you were solving
* The system you implemented (e.g. production planning, stock-on-hand, food safety, KPI cadence)
* The measurable outcome achieved
2) Describe a time you were responsible for improving or maintaining product consistency in a food manufacturing environment.
Include:
* What inconsistency you were seeing (weight, portion, spec, yield, quality, complaints, rework, etc.)
* What systems or controls you put in place to fix it
* How you measured and sustained consistency over time
Location: Sydney
Industry: Food Manufacturing / Wholesale
Employment Type: Full-time