Laboratory Manager

This position forms part of the Technical Team and will help drive the company’s performance by executing the company goals on all aspects of laboratory management. The position will act as the primary bridge between the laboratory team and broader business stakeholders, translating external business requirements into clear and actionable priorities for the lab personnel, and act as a gatekeeper that ensure the lab’s focus on delivering high-quality analytical work in a stable, well-supported environment.

The Laboratory Manager will be a visible, approachable, and present leader, investing in the growth and wellbeing of each team member. This position will collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams, drive change management initiatives to implement new processes and structures, and ensure the team always has the clarity, direction, and support needed to do their best work.

Key accountabilities include:

• Provide leadership and management to all laboratory employees, ensuring they receive the necessary training and development to perform their roles effectively.
• Be a visible, present, and approachable leader: participate actively in team meetings, sensory sessions, and day-to-day operations; engage directly with team members to understand their challenges, provide guidance, and step in proactively when workloads increase or priorities become unclear.
• Create an environment where team members feel comfortable raising concerns, asking questions, and providing feedback without hesitation, and ensure that issues raised are addressed.
• Set and consistently enforce clear expectations, working standards, and team protocols, ensuring standards are upheld equitably and uniformly across the team.
• Foster a culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and effective communication within the laboratory team and with the management team.

• Collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams and stakeholders to align laboratory operations with overall business objectives.
• Act as the primary interface between the laboratory and other department stakeholders, filtering, assessing, and translating incoming requests into clear, prioritised, and actionable tasks for the team.
• Proactively communicate key updates, decisions, priorities, and changes to the whole team in a consistent and timely manner, ensuring information flows openly.
• Establish and maintain clear decision-making frameworks and defined escalation paths, ensuring ownership is explicit for all laboratory activities and that team members always know who to approach and how to escalate issues.
• Manage, investigate, and communicate any out of specification results timeously to quality assurance, and collaborate and support from the lab end to lead any open cases to closure.
• Communicate and provide documentation such as COAs and reports to the requestors.

• Manage, plan, and direct the laboratory to ensure analytical testing provides the highest quality analytical support while ensuring compliance with protocols and safety regulations.
• Plan and control all testing activities to meet the company needs and delivery requirements.
• Optimize the laboratory capacity utilization for all personnel and equipment.
• Ensure analytical analysis is conducted on samples received in the laboratory from supplier networks, markets and other sources.
• Review the results of all laboratory investigations, sampling, and testing of materials, work in progress products, finished products, and competitor products.
• Review and investigate all laboratory data outside of trend, out of specification, suspicious, and wayward data by conducting trending analysis.
• Review product and raw material analysis results.
• Review and approve protocols and reports such as method validation, method transfer, process validation, stability analysis, and creation of standard operation procedures.
• Develop and analyse statistical data and provide insights into product specifications to determine standards.
• Participate and lead projects to deliver opportunities to improve the company working practices.

• Oversee and champion the our LIMS operations, compliance and continuous improvement opportunities
• Ensure and maintain Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) in the laboratory, and increase staff knowledge and understanding about GLP requirements.
• Lead and oversee the laboratory’s ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation process, ensuring sustained compliance with all applicable ISO standards and regulatory requirements
• Ensure all vendors have been qualified and adhere to vendor qualification standards with the aim of optimal utilization of the testing procedure.

• Manage the operations budget of the laboratory and ensure efficient management of the expenses of the laboratory.
• Establish and implement a cost ratio by identifying the best approach for testing.
• Provide technical or scientific support and expertise to our partners for continuous improvement in the quality of the products.

Qualifications & Skills:

• Bachelor’s degree in Food Science or Chemistry-related field.
• Minimum 7 years’ experience in laboratory or QA/QC role with at least 3 years’ supervisory experience.
• Experienced in chemical laboratory instrumentation, such GC, LC, ICP.
• Certified ISO/IEC 17025:2017 Internal Auditor would be advantageous.
• Prior experience as accreditation signatory would be advantageous.
• Prior working experience in food and beverage testing laboratory would be advantageous.
• Prior experience in application of laboratory regulatory licences/permits/SAC assessments would be advantageous.
• Prior experience with developing SOPs and QMS.
• In-depth knowledge of MU and Method Validation would be advantageous.
• Experience with big data analysis and interpretations to extract insights, improve processes and support data-driven decision-making would be advantageous.
• Willing to travel internationally.
• Proficient with MS Office 365 (Excel, Powerpoint, Word etc).