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Salary: USD 140,000 - 160,000 / annual
Hungryroot is an AI-powered food and wellness company that delivers healthy groceries, recipes, and supplements directly to consumers. The company operates a distributed team across 28+ U.S. states with a remote-first culture and headquarters in New York City.
You will join the Operations team as Senior Manager, Produce Quality—a newly created role serving as the technical authority on produce quality, specification governance, and supplier execution. Produce is Hungryroot's most perishable and operationally complex category, and you will be the critical link between growers and shippers, five Fulfillment Centers, and cross-functional partners in Category Management, Planning, and Food Safety & Quality.
Key responsibilities include:
• Own supplier quality and accountability by building relationships with growers and shippers, establishing quality expectations, managing shelf-life requirements, handling corrective actions, and serving as the primary escalation point for quality disputes.
• Lead produce specification governance by developing and maintaining specifications across bulk and co-manufactured produce, creating temporary specs during market changes, and serving as the company's technical authority on produce specifications and compliance.
• Provide technical leadership across the supply chain, partnering with Category Management, Planning, Operations, and FSQA on assortment decisions, supplier capabilities, delivery cadence, truck temperatures, fulfillment center turn days, and seasonal transitions. Leverage deep knowledge of growing regions, weather patterns, and crop conditions to proactively identify and mitigate risks.
• Champion food safety and regulatory compliance by providing technical leadership on produce inspection, grading, and defect identification per USDA standards and PACA regulations. Serve as Hungryroot's primary USDA liaison and monitor critical control points and shelf-life expectations.
• Develop world-class fulfillment center quality teams by training and coaching inbound quality teams across the network on standardized inspection procedures, grading methodologies, defect identification, and communication practices.
• Drive continuous improvement through data by owning produce quality performance from customer feedback through corrective action. Analyze quality trends, identify systemic opportunities, reduce defect rates, and present regular updates to stakeholders and leadership.
• Lead specialty quality programs, including in-house retain testing and other initiatives to validate supplier shelf-life performance.
This is a remote position with approximately 30–40% travel for supplier visits, fulfillment center training, and field assessments.
Qualifications:
• 5–10 years of produce inspection or produce quality experience, with deep expertise in USDA grading standards, PACA regulations, and fresh commodity quality assessment.
• Hands-on experience inspecting, grading, and evaluating quality across a broad range of fresh produce commodities.
• Strong knowledge of growing regions, seasonal transitions, weather impacts, storage crops, and produce supply chain dynamics.
• Experience building and managing supplier relationships with growers, shippers, or produce vendors.
• Experience utilizing Claude or other AI tools for job-related activities such as metric evaluation.
• Demonstrated experience developing, maintaining, and governing produce specifications in a retail, foodservice, or direct-to-consumer environment.
• Experience supporting quality operations across multiple distribution centers, fulfillment centers, or field locations.
• Demonstrated success leading supplier corrective action programs, quality investigations, and supplier performance management.
• Experience training, developing, and standardizing quality practices across distributed operational teams.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to clearly communicate produce quality, operational risks, and recommendations to both field teams and executive leadership.
• Ability to work independently in a remote environment and travel approximately 30–40% for supplier visits, fulfillment center training, and field assessments.
