Sr. Manager, Quality Assurance

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May 19, 2023🔗 👁️ 56 56 Views

🏢 Verano 📍 Chicago, IL

💰 DOE 🗓️ Full-time 🏷️ Compliance 📛 No license required

About our company

Verano™ Holdings is a national, vertically integrated operator of licensed cannabis cultivation, manufacturing, and retail facilities dedicated to improving lives by providing safe access to effective organic cannabis products that enhance health and wellness and by positively impacting the communities it serves. Verano develops and produces a well-rounded suite of limited edition, fashion-forward cannabis products, which offer superior medicinal therapies and inspirational product options. It designs, builds, and operates unique Zen Leaf™ branded dispensary environments that ensure an exceptional shopping experience with unparalleled customer service and satisfaction in both medical and adult-use markets. Verano distributes cannabis concentrates, edibles, extracts, flower, and topicals under its trusted premium brands: GoldLeaf™, Menta™, Sweet Sins™, Encore Company™, Avexia™, and Verano™.

Job description

With a market capitalization of $1 billion, Verano stands as one of the largest vertically integrated, multi-state cannabis operators in the U.S. Over time, with their colleagues, and through driving cross-department collaboration, the Senior Manager’s work will impact operations at 14 production centers with a combined 1,000,000 square feet of cultivation capacity.

The Senior Manager will identify quality gaps, projectize improvements, prioritize workflows and assist driving the transformation required to ensure production center policies, procedures and protocols align with cGMP (current Good Manufacturing Practice) and HACCP (Hazzard Analysis & Critical Control Points) standards. With standards in place, the Senior Manager will create and implement a cross-training program and audit process to ensure standards are consistently met or exceeded and consumers receive, without fail, the finest food safe cannabis flower, oils, liquids, edibles, solid dosages, inhalables, and topicals.

Since the Senior Manager will be part of a new team, focus areas and priorities will change over time. Initially, the Senior Manager can expect to spend 40% of their time engaged with multiple facets on existing quality initiatives. This will allow for good early exposure to all facets of the Verano business and engagement with all key stakeholders; 30% will be allocated to assessing every step of cultivation and production at assigned facilities, identifying improvement opportunities and executing the change required to make lasting impact. This will allow the Senior Manager to impact improvements at every phase – from seed to sale; 30% will be allocated to developing and delivering the training required to keep quality assurance program running with consistency and on a path of continuous improvement.

While the Senior Manager will be an individual contributor, they will draw from a strong social and Political IQ to engage all levels across all production and cultivation functions. They will also collaborate within their team and across other business areas including Retail, Finance, Legal, Compliance, and Marketing.

Responsibilities Overview:

• Assist in the analysis and development of quality and safety metrics and business processes.
• Derive insights from metrics and communicate cross-functionally to assist with solving operational issues.
• Develop, lead or administer policies and practices; initiate and implement projects.
• Conduct presentations and formal training programs.
• Engage cultivation and production workers with authenticity, patience and empathy.
• Improve team communication and engagement
• Think quickly, creatively and challenge others to do the same
• Support and execute various components and activities spanning quality and safety programs such as collecting data, business case product analysis, risk assessments, documenting procedures, develop training, auditing, process improvement and issues management.
• Be accountable for quality and safety programs and achievement of line performance metrics.
• Leverage data and create meaningful insights using analytics techniques/methods.
• Manage a sustained workload comprised of multiple projects, workstreams and competing priorities.

Ideal Candidate

First and foremost, the Senior Manager is a commercially focused individual with a keen sense of purpose and understanding of how their work impacts consumers. He/she is working in a manufacturing setting that operates to cGMP and HACCP standards and regulations and will have played a role in achieving those certifications. The ideal candidate is leading QA in a small to mid-size food manufacturing facility or playing a supporting role on the QA team at a large food manufacturing facility. Some ground-level experience in Production is optimal.

Qualifications:

• A Bachelor’s degree is preferred but is not required.
• 5-8 years of Quality Assurance-related experience in a cGMP or HACCP-certified food manufacturing environment.
• Deep working knowledge of cGMP/HACCP principles.
• Able to convey a structured approach to problem-solving that is supported with examples and quantified outcomes.
• Intermediate or advanced Microsoft Office skills – especially Excel and PowerPoint.
• Intermediate user of a major business analytics/intelligence platform.
• Must be able to convey highly technical subject matter efficiently and effectively to non-technical audiences.
• Demonstratively strong project management skills.
• Able to provide examples of delivering measurable business impact through QA initiatives.
• Excellent written and verbal communication and strong presentation skills.
• Demonstrated effectiveness building followership in a highly matrixed environment.
• Ability to work in an unstructured environment with the ability to make tradeoff decisions quickly.
• Proven ability to work on large projects and manage time and effort without need for constant supervision.
• Ability to lead a team-based approach to decision making.
• Effective coaching, facilitation, presentation and team building skills
• Communication skills to work with all levels of the organization from manufacturing employees to corporate executives.

Essential Attributes:

• Strong bias for action and a sense of urgency; proven skills to make decisions when available facts/data are limited.
• Bias to “roll up your sleeves” and work collaboratively to reach goals; a workstyle devoid of the “it’s not my job” mindset.
• Highly inquisitive.
• Able to exercise sound judgment when limited facts are available.
• Ability to iterate and adapt within high-change and high velocity environments.
• Strong communication and influencing skills.
• Strong social IQ.
• Pronounced sense of urgency.

Requirements:

• Must be 21 years of age, able to provide references, and pass a background check.
• Must verify he/she has no agreement(s) that could or may limit capacity to work for Verano.
• Must be a citizen of the United States (this is a Federal mandate specific to the cannabis industry).