Product Technologist | Technical Manager

Location: London Hybrid (3 days a week in central London office)
Reports to: Product Technologist Coordinator, and Head of Quality

About Atlante

Company Vision

To be a Company which colleagues love to work for, and that producers and customers choose to work with, building win-win relationships with all our business partners based on trust and respect.

Company Mission

Be a strategic, reliable, and competitive global sourcing partner for food and non-food products, developing tailor made solutions from start to finish; from brief to shelf.

Outline

Atlante is a food and drink sourcing specialist based in Bologna in Italy, with a dedicated UK office. Atlante sources own brand and branded products from a global producer base to UK customers across retail, wholesale and food service.

Role Overview:

We are looking for a dynamic Product Technologist/Technical Manager to join our growing quality team. The key responsibilities of this role will include:

Key Responsibilities:

• Liaising with the broader Italy based quality team to understand customer technical, ethical and sustainability requirements to enable Atlante to provide the best-in-class service to its UK customers.
• Working closely with the UK commercial and supply chain teams to ensure products and suppliers meet or exceed customer standards.
• Be the key interface between Italy technical team and UK customers
• Working closely with key customers technical team (Sainsburys) to provide product quality and supplier assurance that meets the customer expectations.
• Be recognised as the expert in UK customer standards and provide guidance and training to the broader Atlante quality team
• Provide support to customers on relevant food safety matters that may affect their products and provide the broader Atlante group with relevant information on regulatory, food import and technical standards that are specific to the UK market. This should be in the form of clear and understandable actions so the rest of the group can implement seamlessly.
• Coordinating customer specification systems ensuring correct prioritisation to meet customer deadlines
• Completion of specifications in line with internal and external customer expectations in terms of accuracy and content, proactively sourcing necessary information.
• Reviewing supplier product specifications in correlation with updated customer requirements.
• Ensuring and managing the compliance, safety and quality of all products.
• Co-ordination of the artwork approval process.
• Manufacturer audits and customer visits

Necessary Skills & Experience:

• Understanding of Sainsbury and/or Tesco technical and ethical standards and ways of working would be essential.
• Food technology (or related) qualification with a background in food technology preferred
• Experience of BRC Food standards, IFS Food standard, HACCP and food safety and supplier audit experience. Understanding of SEDEX and Ethical compliance would be an advantage
• Good knowledge and understanding of food legislation
• Excellent knowledge of common food processes, food ingredient functionality, food formulation and ingredient interactions.
• Expertise in working with retailer specification systems
• Knowledge and understanding of the own label market
• Fluent knowledge of the English language and willingness to learn Italian
• Knowledge of Office package

Preferred Experience

• The ideal candidate would have previous experience working as a Food Technologist or Technical Manager in the technical teams of a UK retailer (preferably Sainsburys and/or/Tesco)
• We would consider candidates that have not worked directly for UK retailers but have extensive experience working within food manufacturer and supplying UK retailers

Workplace

• Based in Central London but we do offer Hybrid working. There is an expectation the successful candidate will be available for foreign travel to Italy and to key suppliers.

Duration

• Permanent or Part time would be considered – this depends on the candidate’s experience. If part time we would expect minimum 3 days a week.