Director, Food Safety & Quality Assurance

About CookUnity: Food has lost its soul to modern convenience. And with it, it has lost the power to nourish, inspire, and connect us. So in 2018, CookUnity was founded as the first-of-its-kind platform that connects the world with the source of truly great food: chefs. Today, CookUnity delivers 50 million meals a year from the industry’s best chefs to homes all over the country. Fresh. Ready-to-eat. And crafted with the passion that nourishes body and soul. Unwilling to stop there, CookUnity is expanding beyond delivery to become an ever-innovating marketplace focused on our singular mission: empower Chefs to nourish the world. If that mission has you hungry in more ways than one, you’ve found the right job posting. About the Team: Delivering more than 3M meals per month and growing 3x YoY, CookUnity is also helping improve the livelihood of working chefs, tripling their income and enabling the growth of their own teams and personal brands. We believe that healthy food fuels stronger communities—and that food safety is foundational to that mission. The role: CookUnity is seeking an experienced and highly strategic Director, Food Safety & Quality Assurance to lead and scale food safety excellence across our NYC operations. This role is critical to enabling CookUnity’s rapid growth and marketplace expansion by building best-in-class, data-driven food safety systems that protect our customers, strengthen brand trust, and support operational innovation at scale. CookUnity operates at the intersection of culinary innovation, direct-to-consumer distribution, and multi-site ready-to-eat production, requiring a leader who can balance speed of growth with disciplined control of core risks such as sanitation, cold chain integrity, supplier governance, and regulatory alignment across jurisdictions. This role offers the rare opportunity to build foundational programs, influence product and operational design, and embed food safety as a strategic enabler of growth as CookUnity expands its geographic footprint, SKU complexity, and marketplace ecosystem. The Director will partner cross-functionally to translate emerging risks into pragmatic controls that protect consumers, strengthen brand trust, and support the company’s trajectory toward category leadership and potential public market readiness. As the site Food Safety leader, this role owns the end-to-end food safety strategy and execution for one of CookUnity’s most complex markets. Reporting into the VP, Food Safety & Quality Assurance, this leader will act as a key thought partner across Operations, Culinary, Supply Chain, and Regulatory teams—ensuring food safety is deeply embedded into how we design, build, and scale our production systems. The ideal candidate operates at both a strategic and systems level, while remaining close enough to execution to drive impact on the ground. They bring strong leadership presence, the ability to influence at all levels, and a track record of building scalable programs in high-growth environments. Responsibilities: Own and drive the end-to-end food safety strategy for NYC operations, aligning with company-wide growth, marketplace expansion, and operational excellence goals Serve as the executive food safety leader on-site, accountable for regulatory compliance, audit performance, and overall food safety outcomes Lead all regulatory interactions, including FDA/USDA/local agencies, third-party audits, and certifications; ensure best-in-class inspection readiness and execution Design, implement, and continuously evolve scalable food safety systems across high-volume, ready-to-eat production environments Establish and monitor key food safety KPIs and risk indicators, leveraging data to proactively identify trends, mitigate risks, and drive continuous improvement Oversee and optimize preventive controls and critical programs, including HACCP, environmental monitoring, sanitation, allergen management, cold chain, and process controls Partner cross-funct