Job Description
Overview:
TekWissen is a global workforce management provider headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan that offers strategic talent solutions to our clients world-wide. Our client provides services to the travel industry, including catering, onboard retail, food service provisioning, and food logistics and is a supplier to many major airlines.
Job Title: Director Culinary Operations
Location: Burlingame, CA, 94010
Duration: Full Time
Job Type: Full Time
Work Type: Onsite
Shift: 1st Shift
Job Summary :
- The Director Culinary Operations is the senior culinary and production leader responsible for overseeing a high-volume, complex airline catering operation functioning as an industrial-scale food manufacturing production department.
- This role ensures the safe, compliant, efficient, and cost-effective production of high-quality meals across multiple airline customers, while leading teams, enforcing strict process controls, and driving continuous improvement through data, standardization, and advanced production techniques.
- The Director of Culinary Operations at the intersection of culinary excellence, industrial engineering, food safety, and operational leadership, ensuring all outputs meet regulatory requirements, airline specifications, and internal "gold standard" quality benchmarks.
In this role, you'll:
- Lead high-volume airline catering production operations
- Drive food safety, sanitation, and regulatory compliance (HACCP, GMP, FDA/USDA)
- Oversee production planning, ERP/MRP systems, and process controls
- Optimize labor, food costs, quality, and operational KPIs
- Champion continuous improvement and Lean manufacturing principles
- Develop and inspire culinary, supervisory, and production teams
- Partner cross-functionally with Supply Chain, QA, Engineering, Maintenance, and Commercial teams
We're looking for professionals with:
- 10+ years of leadership experience in food manufacturing, airline catering, or high-volume food production environments
- Strong expertise in production management, quality systems, and operational performance
- A proven track record of building high-performing teams and driving business results
- Experience with ERP/MRP systems, production planning, and continuous improvement methodologies
Key Responsibilities:
Safety, Sanitation & Compliance:
- Consistently meets or exceeds regulatory and industry standards, including Health Department requirements, USDA and FDA regulations, as well as HACCP, GMP, and stringent airline-specific protocols.
- Culinary Operations partners with the QA Support teams in the design, execution, and continuous improvement of robust sanitation programs, ensuring that cleaning schedules, validation processes, and verification mechanisms are rigorously followed. A strong focus is placed on allergen management and the prevention of cross-contamination, safeguarding both product integrity and consumer well-being.
- Director of Culinary Operations ensures full traceability and control throughout the production lifecycle, embedding food safety and operational discipline into the DNA of the kitchen organization.
Production Leadership:
- Director of Culinary Operations operates as the senior production leader of a high-volume, industrialized food manufacturing environment.
- They orchestrate complex, multi-line, multi-shift operations, ensuring that production flows seamlessly across kitchens and assembly lines.
- Director of Culinary Operations establishes and reinforces standardized processes, driving consistency and eliminating variability.
- Accountable for optimizing kitchen throughput, maximizing efficiency, and ensuring on-time and in-full delivery to assembly (i.e. Make & Pack) in a fast-paced and demanding operational environment.
Production Planning, ERP/MRP & Process Control:
- The Director of Culinary Operations owns the end-to-end food production planning process, including the Master Production Schedule (MPS) for the kitchen and detailed production sequencing required to meet dynamic customer demand. Leveraging ERP and MRP systems, they ensure accurate material planning, capacity alignment, and real-time execution tracking.
- This role demands rigorous control over batch sheets and work orders, ensuring data accuracy and operational discipline at every stage.
- The Director of Culinary Operations implements structured process control mechanisms to reduce variability, enhance predictability, and improve overall system performance.
- Close collaboration with planning, procurement, and logistics functions is essential to ensure a synchronized and efficient supply chain, from raw materials to finished product.
Quality Management:
- Implementation of Total Quality Management (TQM) principles across the entire food production and assembly operation. They establish and enforce "gold standard", recipe accuracy, specifications, and procedures that define excellence in product quality and consistency.
- Director of Culinary Operations ensures that every product meets rigorous standards before reaching the customer. Strong emphasis is placed on portion control and uniformity, critical in a high-volume airline catering context.
- Continuous improvement is a core expectation
- Business Performance & KPI Management
- The Director of Culinary Operations is fully accountable for operational performance, owning a comprehensive set of KPIs that reflect both efficiency and effectiveness. These include food cost percentage, labor cost and productivity, food waste, yield accuracy, portion consistency, and on-time delivery.
- Director of Culinary Operations identifies trends, gaps, and improvement opportunities, driving both corrective and preventive actions. They play a key role in building a culture where decisions are grounded in data and performance management is embedded at every level of the operation.
- The Director of Culinary Operations ensures strict adherence to FIFO principles, safeguarding product freshness while minimizing waste and obsolescence.
- They actively monitor and manage key cost drivers, including food cost (COGS), waste levels, recipe yield accuracy and inventory variances, taking corrective action where necessary.
Team Leadership, Training & Development:
- The Director of Culinary Operations fosters a high-performance culture characterized by accountability, discipline, and continuous improvement.
- Responsible for designing and implementing comprehensive training programs that reinforce food safety, process adherence, and operational excellence.
- Director of Culinary Operations invests in long-term capability building, developing future leaders and establishing robust succession pipelines to sustain organizational success.
Advanced Food Production Techniques:
- The Director of Culinary Operations brings a strong understanding of modern food processing technologies and their application in a large-scale production environment. This includes methods such as sous-vide, hot-fill processing, pasteurization, and other shelf-life extension techniques.
Cross-Functional Collaboration:
- of Culinary Operations works closely with multiple stakeholders, including Supply Chain Planning, Buyers, Quality Assurance, Process Engineering, Maintenance, and Commercial teams.
- Ensures alignment between production capabilities and customer requirements, navigating operational constraints while maintaining service excellence
- Director of Culinary Operations with corporate functions drive strategic initiatives, innovation, and transformation efforts, contributing to the long-term success and competitiveness of the organization.
- Skills/Experience:
Qualifications & Experience & Education:
- Bachelor's degree in:
- Industrial Engineering
- Process Engineering
- Food Engineering
- Related field (preferred)
- Culinary qualifications are a plus but not mandatory.
Experience:
- Minimum 10+ years of hands-on leadership experience in:
- Large-scale food manufacturing/production environments (strongly preferred)
- Airline catering or high-volume institutional catering
- Proven experience as Production Manager/Culinary Operations Leader
- Experience implementing Lean food production/manufacturing and Continuous Improvement methodologies
- Demonstrated experience with ERP/MRP systems (MPS, production planning)
- Technical & Functional Skills
- Deep knowledge of:
- Food safety systems (HACCP, GMP, FDA/USDA compliance)
- Industrial-scale food production processes
- Production planning and scheduling
- Strong understanding of:
- KPIs and operational financial drivers
- Inventory and cost control
- Hands-on capability with batch control, process standardization, and quality systems.
TekWissen Group is an equal opportunity employer supporting workforce diversity.
Numbers & Facts
| Location | San Francisco, CA |
| Industry | Computer/IT Services |
| Salary | $75–$80 |
| Company Size | 100 to 499 employees |
| Year Founded | 2009 |
| Website | http://www.tekwissen.com/ |
About Company
WE THE TEKWISSEN PEOPLE
TekWissen offers you a broader portfolio of services, industry-leading solutions, and the meaningful innovations that give you greater flexibility and speed to respond to market dynamics, reduced costs and risk to improve enterprise performance, and increased productivity to enable growth.
To keep pace with global market demands, TekWissen keeps its finger on the pulse of change. Our organized approach to guiding a project from its inception to closure. Managing projects is becoming more and more important as we enter the digital era. To cope with the pace that this transition demands, a method is required to manage projects so they can yield quality work, while incorporating efficient use of time and resources.
Project involves identifying which quality standards are relevant to the project and determining how to satisfy them.
It is important to perform quality planning during the Planning Process and should be done alongside the other project planning processes because changes in the quality will likely require changes in the other planning processes, or the desired product quality may require a detailed risk analysis of an identified problem. It is important to remember that quality should be planned, designed, then built in, not added on after the fact.
Capabilities and accomplishments in one TekWissen business enhance the opportunity for success in the others. Put simply, TekWissen's unique combination of attributes promotes success.Skills
- Assembly Lineunmatched
- Benchmarkingunmatched
- Business Performance Managementunmatched
- Business Strategyunmatched
- Calendar Managementunmatched
- Catering Servicesunmatched
- Continuous Improvementunmatched
- Corrective Actionunmatched
- Cost Controlunmatched
- Cost of Goods Sold (COGS)unmatched
- Cross-Functionalunmatched
- Culinary Operationsunmatched
- DNAunmatched
- Data Managementunmatched
- Data Qualityunmatched
- Diversityunmatched
- ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)unmatched
- Embedded Systemsunmatched
- FDA (Food and Drug Administration)unmatched
- FDA Requirementsunmatched
- FIFOunmatched
- Food Productionunmatched
- Food Qualityunmatched
- Food Safetyunmatched
- Food Servicesunmatched
- GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices)unmatched
- Health Departmentunmatched
- Industrial Engineeringunmatched
- Industry Standardsunmatched
- Inventory Costsunmatched
- Inventory Managementunmatched
- Leadershipunmatched
- Lean Manufacturingunmatched
- Logisticsunmatched
- Maintain Complianceunmatched
- Manufacturing Assemblyunmatched
- Master Production Scheduleunmatched
- Materials Planningunmatched
- Operations Processesunmatched
- Performance Managementunmatched
- Performance Metricsunmatched
- Portion Controlunmatched
- Process Control Engineeringunmatched
- Process Engineeringunmatched
- Process Improvementunmatched
- Procurement Planningunmatched
- Production Controlunmatched
- Production Costingunmatched
- Production Managementunmatched
- Production Planningunmatched
- Production Scheduleunmatched
- Production Systemsunmatched
- Production Volumeunmatched
- Quality Assuranceunmatched
- Quality Assurance Methodologyunmatched
- Quality Managementunmatched
- Regulationsunmatched
- Regulatory Complianceunmatched
- Regulatory Requirementsunmatched
- Retailunmatched
- Safety Processunmatched
- Safety Systemsunmatched
- Sanitationunmatched
- Strategic Planningunmatched
- Supply Chainunmatched
- Supply Chain Managementunmatched
- System Operationsunmatched
- Team Lead/Managerunmatched
- Time Managementunmatched
- Time Trackingunmatched
- Total Quality Management (TQM)unmatched
- Traceabilityunmatched
- Training Programunmatched
- Travel Industryunmatched
- Trend Analysisunmatched
- United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)unmatched
- Validation Testingunmatched
- Workforce Managementunmatched
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