Job Description
Plant Manager at Nexus Search Plant Manager at Nexus Search in Oceanside, California Posted in 1 day ago.
Type:
full-time Job Description:
We are partnering with a fast-growing, innovation-led food and beverage ingredients business to appoint a Plant Manager for one of its key manufacturing facilities in Carlsbad, CA. This site plays an important role in the company's broader ingredient platform, producing value-added products for leading food, beverage, and CPG customers. The Plant Manager will be responsible for leading day-to-day site operations, driving operational performance, strengthening production discipline, and ensuring the facility continues to deliver safely, efficiently, and to the highest quality standards. This is a hands-on leadership role suited to someone who understands food, beverage, ingredients, or broader CPG manufacturing, has strong plant-floor credibility, and can bring structure, accountability, and continuous improvement into a fast-moving production environment. Key Responsibilities:
Lead all day-to-day manufacturing operations across facility Own site performance across safety, quality, production, cost, service, labor, and efficiency. Manage and develop production, maintenance, sanitation, warehouse, and operational support teams. Drive a strong culture of safety, food safety, quality, accountability, and continuous improvement. Partner closely with Quality, Supply Chain, R D, Commercial, and Senior Leadership to ensure customer requirements are met. Oversee production planning, staffing, scheduling, throughput, yield, downtime, and operational execution. Identify and implement process improvements across manufacturing, labor utilization, equipment reliability, and plant systems. Ensure compliance with GMPs, food safety standards, sanitation requirements, regulatory expectations, and customer audit standards. Support new product launches, process improvements, scale-up activity, and commercialization projects. Build clear operating routines, KPIs, and reporting structures to improve visibility and accountability across the plant. Lead troubleshooting efforts across production, equipment, quality, and process-related challenges. Manage site budgets, operating costs, labor spend, and capital improvement priorities. Develop supervisors and frontline leaders to create a more disciplined, capable, and engaged plant team. Ideal Candidate Profile:
Plant Management, Operations Management, or senior Production leadership experience within food, beverage, ingredients, specialty manufacturing, or broader CPG manufacturing. Strong understanding of food safety, GMPs, sanitation, quality systems, and regulated manufacturing environments. Experience leading teams in a hands-on plant environment. Track record improving operational performance, including efficiency, downtime, yield, labor productivity, safety, and quality. Comfortable working in a fast-paced, growth-oriented business where systems may still be evolving. Strong communication skills with the ability to lead both frontline teams and cross-functional stakeholders. Continuous improvement mindset, with practical experience implementing process discipline and operational structure. Experience within value-added ingredients, liquid processing, dry blending, extracts, flavors, functional ingredients, or specialty food and beverage manufacturing would be highly relevant but is not essential. Key Requirements 7+ years of progressive manufacturing leadership experience. Experience in food, beverage, ingredients, CPG, or regulated manufacturing. Prior responsibility for site-level or department-level operational performance. Strong people leadership capability across hourly and salaried teams. Demonstrated ability to improve plant processes, team accountability, and production performance. Bachelor's degree preferred, but equivalent operational leadership experience will be considered.
