Cleaning & Hygiene Manager

Join Our Pack 🐶🍽️ 

 From a bold idea to revolutionising dog food, Years has grown into a fast-scaling business dedicated to helping dogs live longer, healthier lives.    

In just 3 years, we’ve built a great start up business, serving thousands of happy customers, all while striving to achieve our mission.   

Our goal? To give dog owners a better, fresher, and healthier way to feed their pets. We provide human cut, personalised meals designed to support each dog’s unique needs, delivered straight to their door - no preservatives, no compromises, just real nutrition.   

You can find our customers across the UK, with future ambitions to scale internationally and continue transforming how people care for their dogs.   

Your Mission

As our Cleaning & Hygiene Manager, you'll take full ownership of hygiene and cleaning standards across the site overnight, setting the strategy, budget, and KPIs that keep us compliant with food safety, allergen control, and COSHH regulations – and driving continuous improvement across the whole cleaning operation.

You'll lead and develop the Overnight Cleaning Supervisor(s) and their teams, owning rotas, training, performance, and succession planning, while being the site's senior authority on environmental swabbing, microbiological verification, and sign-off of cleaning-down and pre-op checks before production starts each day.

You'll report into Operations and act as the primary point of contact for QA/Technical on BRCGS audits and CAPA closure, owning hygiene KPIs, incident investigation, and root-cause follow-up across the site.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the overnight hygiene and cleaning strategy for the site, including budget, headcount planning, and continuous improvement
• Lead, coach, and develop the Overnight Cleaning Supervisor(s) and wider overnight team, owning performance management and succession planning
• Own the COSHH register and all policies for safe use, storage, and handling of cleaning chemicals
• Design, implement, and continuously improve the environmental swabbing and microbiological verification programme, interpreting trends and driving corrective action
• Take final sign-off responsibility for cleaning-down and pre-op checks before production start, across all sites and outside areas (yard, offices)
• Own and maintain cleaning schedules, SOPs, and allergen changeover procedures, ensuring they reflect current best practice and regulation
• Manage the budget, stock, and supplier relationships for cleaning chemicals and consumables, negotiating contracts where relevant
• Act as the primary contact for QA/Technical on BRCGS audit preparation, hosting auditors and owning CAPA follow-up to closure
• Own hygiene KPI reporting and incident investigation, presenting findings and improvement plans to Operations leadership
• Champion a culture of hygiene excellence and continuous improvement across the site

What You'll Bring

Experience

• Proven management experience in a food manufacturing hygiene role, ideally having managed supervisors or team leaders
• Knowledge of cleaning chemical dosing/COSHH controls
• Creating and maintaining CICs for production equipment
• Track record of leading BRCGS (or equivalent) audits and closing out CAPAs
• Hands-on experience carrying out and interpreting swabbing/hygiene verification results
• Experience managing budgets and supplier relationships
• Hygienic design review of new and existing machinery, including liaising with engineering on hygienic design changes/modifications
• Deep clean scheduling and validation (incl. ATP swabbing)
• Root cause investigation for hygiene/contamination issues
• Training and competency sign-off for cleaning teams

Core Skills

• Level 3 (or above) Food Safety & Hygiene qualification (e.g. CIEH/CIEH-equivalent)
• NEBOSH or IOSH (or equivalent) H&S qualification desirable
• HACCP Level 3/4 certification
• COSHH awareness/training
• Level 2/3 H&S qualification (e.g. IOSH Managing Safely)
• Allergen management training
• Eligibility to work in the United Kingdom

Personal Attributes

• A confident communicator able to influence Operations, QA/Technical, and external auditors alike

• Salary of £50,000 to £60,000 per annum
• Medicash Level 4 Cashback plan
• Annual £200 Wellbeing budget
• Spill EAP and Mental Health Support programme
• Annual £250.00 Learning & Development budget for courses, books or other self-learn activities each year
• Monthly recognition through our Yappa of The Month programme
• 1 Volunteer day per year - dog themed or not: it’s your choice!
• Subsidised employee groups - from five a side to padel there’s loads to get involved in or the chance to start up your own group
• Bi-annually subsidised team events from Axe throwing, crazy golf to cocktail making
• Exclusive discounts on Years and Years treats for yourself and friends/family
• Lunch & Learn programme - from dog first aid to financial savviness we’ve got sessions planned to cover all kinds of topics
• Casual dress
• Your birthday off or different day if it falls on a non-working day
• Ability to sell any unused holiday back to Years at the end of the Holiday Year (maximum 1 working week)