QA Auditor

Title: Quality Assurance Auditor Location: Wigan Salary: £24,000 per annum Shift Pattern: Sunday – Thursday Shift Time: 07:30 – 4:05 Benefits Package: 25 Days Annual Leave Life Assurance Personal Accident Cover Pension Flexible Benefits Package Staff Shop Free Parking
At Bakkavor we’re proud to offer you a career with real scope for development. To reward your hard work and ambition as a talented QA Auditor with plenty of support and opportunity and empower you to drive your own success and create a career you can be proud of too.
Who are Bakkavor: Bakkavor is one of the leading providers of fresh prepared food in the UK, with an international presence in the US and China.
Our 19,000 employees operate from 39 locations, developing and producing innovative food for a wide variety of occasions and budgets. In the UK, we work with leading grocery retailers, focusing on their own label brands.
In the UK, our customers include some of the UKs best known grocery retailers including Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Asda and Morrison’s, who sell our products to consumers under their respective retail brands.
Bakkavor Meals based in Wigan, specialises in making chilled ready meals, food to go salads and vegetable accompaniments and employs over 1,000 people. It is part of the Bakkavor Meals sector which has eight factories in the UK.
The role: Working as part of a wider team of QA Auditors and reporting directly in to our Quality Assurance Supervisors, you will play a key role in ensuring that our Wigan site continues to meet all quality and technical standards set nationally and by our grocery retailer partners.
As one of our QA Auditors, you will audit, monitor, improve and evaluate quality systems and procedures and provide technical support for the operational teams as well as maintaining and promoting technical and quality standards in line with business needs and customer requirements will be a key focus.
In this position you will work on a permanent day shift which will include some weekend working as set by the rota.
As well as welcoming applications from candidates from a quality or technical background, we would also like to encourage applications from candidates who have operational or line experience within food production/manufacturing who wish to develop their career. If you have excellent attention to detail, are process driven and can use your initiative to prioritise your workload and problem solve we would like to hear from you.
Full training on internal quality processes is provided to the successful candidate.
Day to day duties will be:

• To audit compliance against Quality Management Systems, GMP and HACCP controls, raising all non-conformances against relevant standards with objective evidence.
• Effectively communicating to enable the operational teams to take the appropriate and necessary corrective action – then following up and monitoring completion of actions.
• Suggesting areas of improvement, relating to fabrication and procedures.
• Understanding the site traceability system to complete audits to demonstrate compliance and retrieve information for investigation purposes.
• To take samples (micro, nutritional, swab and organoleptic) against specific schedules and communicate the progress in a timely manner.
• Prepare and facilitate taste panels in accordance with procedure - ensuring that all results are accurately recorded and communicated to site.
• Calibration of measurement equipment in accordance with schedules and procedures.
• To assist the QA Supervisor in carrying out full investigations on specifications (micro and nutritional), complaints and incidents. Investigations may take the form of sampling, process reviews, traceability, or audits.
• To support NPD trials and product launches, assisting in micro testing and product life assessment to ensure products are manufactured to the correct standard as necessary.
• Providing technical support and advice to the factory team in the event of customer visit or audit.
• Coordination of day to day activities to deliver improvement of Technical KPIs
• To operate in a safe working manner and support the site/business on continuous improvement relating to health, safety, and the environment

About You: Ideally you will have some professional experience within a similar Technical/QA role in a food environment but skills can be taught and if you have the enthusiasm and drive to develop within quality assurance this is an excellent first role.
Understanding the chain of custody within the food environment and a background of working on small to mid-sized quality improvement projects, such as implementing new procedures and defining new supporting documentation - will be key.
You will be an excellent communicator who can work alone with a proactive and innovative approach to problem solving.
You will always adopt a thorough and diligent approach to every task and you will be able to demonstrate our key values of customer care, can-do, teamwork and not just getting it right but keeping it right.
What you can expect from us: When joining us you can expect a highly competitive rewards package including group pension and other flexible benefits - alongside excellent career progression prospects across the Bakkavor group.
Proud to be Bakkavor We’re proud to be the leading UK provider of innovative, high-quality, fresh prepared food. We’re proud to be driven by the hard work and passion of our people. And we’re proud to offer a wide range of careers full of support and opportunity. Join our team and we’ll make you proud too.