Director Sanitation

As a leader and innovator in the snack food industry for over 50 years, J&J Snack Foods provides branded snack foods to foodservice and retail supermarket outlets across the U.S. Its products include such icons as SUPERPRETZEL, ICEE, and Dippin’ Dots along with other key brands like LUIGI’S Real Italian Ice, The Funnel Cake Factory Funnel Cakes, and Hola Churros. J&J also has a strong presence in bakery providing cakes, cookies, and pies to some of the largest grocery and convenience retailers in industry. Our company continues to deliver record sales led by a talented team and a commitment to “Fun Served Here”. POSITION SUMMARY: The Director of Sanitation is a strategic and operational leader responsible for developing, implementing, and continuously improving the enterprise-wide sanitation program across 12 food manufacturing facilities. Reporting to the Senior Director, FSQA & Regulatory, this position provides leadership, technical expertise, and direction to ensure all products are manufactured in a sanitary, hygienic, and regulatory-compliant environment that protects consumer safety, product quality, and company reputation. The Director of Sanitation will establish and execute a comprehensive 3–5-year sanitation strategy focused on advancing best-in-class sanitation practices, standardization, risk reduction, operational excellence, and continuous improvement across all facilities. This role will drive harmonization of sanitation programs, develop sanitation talent and organizational capability, implement innovative cleaning technologies and equipment, and ensure compliance with FSMA, GFSI, customer, and regulatory requirements. The successful candidate will serve as the company’s sanitation subject matter expert, leading initiatives that optimize sanitation effectiveness, improve cleaning validation and verification programs, reduce food safety risks associated with allergens and cross-contamination, identify cost-saving opportunities, and support hygienic design principles in facility, process, and equipment development. This leader will proactively leverage industry best practices, emerging technologies, automation, data analytics, and continuous improvement methodologies to enhance sanitation performance, operational efficiency, and overall business results. ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS: • Serve as the corporate sanitation subject matter expert and primary resource for sanitation-related initiatives, risk assessments, and problem-solving. • Directly manages the Corporate Sanitation Manager and provides functional leadership to plant sanitation leaders across all manufacturing facilities. • Develop and execute a 3–5-year sanitation strategy aligned with company goals, regulatory requirements, and industry best practices. • Lead the development, implementation, and governance of enterprise sanitation standards, SSOPs, cleaning validation and verification programs, and sanitation systems to drive consistency and harmonization across all manufacturing facilities. • Ensure sanitation programs effectively prevent microbiological, allergen, foreign material, and cross-contamination risks. • Lead the evaluation, selection, and implementation of emerging sanitation technologies, equipment, automation systems, chemicals, and cleaning methodologies to improve sanitation effectiveness, food safety performance, operational efficiency, sustainability, and cost optimization across all manufacturing facilities. • Drive continuous sanitation innovation through the advancement of CIP optimization, dry-cleaning strategies, automated and robotic sanitation systems, environmental monitoring technologies, and data-driven sanitation tools to maintain industry-leading sanitation and food safety programs. • Benchmark sanitation programs against leading food manufacturing organizations and industry best practices. • Ensure compliance with FSMA Preventive Controls requirements, GFSI standards, USDA, FDA, customer requirements, and applicable regulatory expectations. • Serve as the enterprise sanitation leader by partnering with Operations, FSQA, Engineering, Maintenance, EH&S, Procurement, Supply Chain, and Plant Leadership to align sanitation programs with business objectives, strengthen food safety and regulatory compliance, optimize operational performance, and drive continuous improvement across all manufacturing facilities. • Lead sanitation readiness efforts for customer, regulatory, and third-party audits. • Drive post-sanitation inspection and audit programs with documented corrective actions. • Support root cause investigations, corrective actions, and preventive action programs related to sanitation, food safety, and environmental monitoring findings. • Establish and oversee sanitation performance management systems, including KPIs, scorecards, dashboards, audits, and reporting processes to measure program effectiveness, ensure accountability, and drive enterprise-wide standardization and execution excellence. • Analyze sanitation, food safety, environmental, and operational performance data to identify trends, risks, continuous improvement opportunities, and cost-saving initiatives, driving measurable improvements in sanitation effectiveness, resource utilization, regulatory compliance, and business performance. • Establish standards, performance measures, and governance processes for third-party sanitation providers. • Lead, coach, mentor, and develop sanitation managers and sanitation teams across all manufacturing locations. • Develop ongoing training programs that strengthen technical expertise and program execution. • Foster a culture of sanitation ownership, accountability, food safety, and continuous improvement throughout the organization. • Conduct facility assessments and sanitation audits to identify gaps, drive corrective actions, and share best practices. • Oversee the corporate Integrated Pest Management (IPM) program across all manufacturing locations. • Support sanitary design rev