Food and Beverage Production Engineer

Job Description: Production Engineer

Company Overview:

Nulixir, an early-stage start-up, is a business-to-business (B2B) biotechnology company that develops, manufactures, and licenses intellectual property (IP) for smart nanocarriers, called nanovesicles, which optimize the performance of functional ingredients in food & beverage products. Nulixir is revolutionizing this space shaping the future of intelligent food and nutrition. This patented technology has applications across multiple verticals in food and beverage (e.g., nootropics, energy stimulants, vitamins, probiotics, protein, etc.).

Founded in 2019, the company brought a together a team of CPG leaders, scientists, US attorneys, and nutritionists to overcome long-standing challenges in the Food and Beverage Industry. The firms founder has extensive experience in the development of nanocarriers for cancer therapeutics.

In the past-year, Nulixir sales have grown ~3x with strong interest from small, mid-size and large CPG companies to partner with Nulixir and incorporate the technology in their products. Nulixir boasts an impressive board of senior executives from companies like Pepsi, Danone, Paine, Schwartz Partners, etc. The company currently has 20+ employees with a stellar executive team who come from food B2B companies such as ADM, Givaudan, Kerry, and ex-MBB consultants.

Position Overview:

Nulixir is looking for a highly qualified and experienced professional to co-lead Nulixirs manufacturing operations. You will partner closely with Product Development, Sales, and Procurement functions to deliver premium quality products to our B2B customers in a timely and cost-efficient manner as well as continuously identify ways to improve our manufacturing operations as we scale-up over time.

You should be highly experienced in the advanced manufacturing operations. The ideal candidate has immense intellectual curiosity, operations rigor, quality-focus mindset, metrics driven approach, and strong technical and quality control background. In this role, you will directly report to the Head of Operations.

In this important role, you will be responsible for:

• Lead a segment of Nulixirs day-to-day manufacturing operations of including developing a daily production plan and ensuring daily operations goals are realized

• Manage a growing team of Production Operators and Technicians

• Develop plans for all aspects of production including equipment purchases, staffing needs, work schedules, and material requirements

• Manage an annual capital spend of ~$2M+ and annual operating budget of ~$1.5M+

• Design, implement, and manage production forecasting, capacity planning, and production scheduling based on prioritization of different customer orders in partnership with Commercial team and ensure orders are met in a timely fashion

• Collaborate with procurement and supply chain to plan raw materials inventory to ensure timely availability for production

• Ensure a healthy and safe manufacturing environment for all employees in compliance with federal and state regulations

• Develop a thorough understanding of process flow and key controls of the manufacturing processes; use this knowledge along with daily observations of all areas of the operations facility to drive continuous improvement of throughput and yield

• Design and implement new manufacturing processes and procedures to improve efficiency and reduce costs

• Design and implement SOPs providing production instruction for all formulations including make-to-stock and made-to-order runs

• Build a robust preventative maintenance plan for all manufacturing equipment and order new parts in timely fashion to minimize downtime driven by equipment issues

• Devise strategy to scale up operations and implement new extraction and production lines to consistently to grow Nulixirs manufacturing capacity supporting sales growth in a cost-efficient manner

• Conduct feasibility test of scaling up production for new SKUs as part of product development process in partnership with Commercialization team

• Develop robust SOPs for end-to-end manufacturing process for each new product being produced for first-time; leverage learnings from bench-top scale

• Define quality standards (including both quality control and quality assurance) across our manufacturing (bench top to large scale) and setting up systems and processes to meet those standards

• Establish a robust metrics-driven system to measure quality of each batch and develop processes to meet defined goals for these metrics (e.g., particle size, PH, etc.)

• Lead processes to obtain GMP, Organic, and other relevant certifications for Nulixirs manufacturing facility

• Maintain relevant quality and regulatory certification on an annual basis

Relevant Job Experiences, Skills, and Key requirements for this role:

• A minimum of 3+ years of experience in manufacturing operations with experience in food & beverage, food B2B, or other industries with adjacent manufacturing processes

• Worked in a variety of manufacturing roles, including quality control, production, maintenance, purchasing, inventory management and logistics

• Any relevant certifications related to manufacturing operations and / or quality control preferred but not a requirement

• Establishing new manufacturing systems, processes, and operations (e.g., experience in setting up new facilities)

• Strong experience in establishing and maintaining a world-class quality organization within food and beverage

• Experience with rapidly growing, fast paced businesses and / or start-up experience; need to have a good understanding of start-up culture and mentality

• Collaborative work style with colleagues across functions, partners, and external support resources to analyze and draw actionable conclusions that impact manufacturing operations and related costs

• Ability to clearly communicate findings and to support conclusions and recommendations.

• Self-motivated, organized, and resilient with ability to define goals, prioritize workplans and overcome obstacles.

• Comfortable working at both a strategic and tactical level

• Strong verbal and written communication and reporting skills

• Ability to find creative solutions to complex problems

• Entrepreneurial and self-starter

• Thrives in an ambiguous environment with limited datapoints

• Self-motivated, high energy and collaborative work style

Pay Range:

• $65 - $85K plus bonus

• Stock Options (after initial employment period)

We Offer:

• A unique and diverse company culture, shaped by people with commitment, sense of responsibility, risk-taking and discipline

• An excellent start-up work environment, flat hierarchy, and short decision paths

• Competitive salary

• Health, Dental and Vision Insurance

• Annual Performance Bonus; and

• Stock options.

Nulixirians Culture:

We recruit, promote, and reward based off of our five core values:

• Sleeves Up - At Nulixir, we provide the autonomy and creativity needed to own your role, iterate where needed and drive impact on a massive scale.

• 100% Transparency - Nulixir is passionate about open feedback at all levels of the company. This allows us to fail fast, create in real time and build an open company culture.

• Be Defiantly Great - We are defiant, thats in our lifeblood, we accomplish what other people think are impossible. Challenging the status quo is our lifeblood.

• Unconditional Empathy - Our customers are real people with real business needs, and we are here to listen and tackle accordingly. If we care and respect each other, there is no challenge we cant overcome.

• Be the solution, not just the critic - take ownership and drive collaboration. We work together and we build together.