Quality Control Lead

LIGHT LABS

Powering a healthier food system through data, transparency, and accountability.

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Quality Control Lead

Light Labs | Ann Arbor, MI (On-site, Lab) | Supporting Ann Arbor and Salt Lake City | Reports to the Quality Director

The Opportunity

Are you the quality professional people turn to when a result has to hold up? Someone who wants to be the one who decides when a number is ready to leave the lab? Then you'd be a great fit as our Quality Control Lead. You'll own the day-to-day quality system across both of our labs, decide when data is fit to release, drive corrective actions to closure, and be the person who notices a drifting instrument before a client does.

You'll also serve as deputy to the Quality Director and cover for them when they're out, which means being ready to speak for quality in front of an assessor, a client, or the lab floor.

Why Light Labs

Light Labs returns results in about three days where the industry takes seven to fourteen, at sub-ppb detection, under ISO/IEC 17025. Brands put those numbers on their product pages and inside their compliance filings for Prop 65, CA AB 899, and Amazon.

None of that matters if the results aren't defensible. That's where you come in.

What You'll Own

• The quality system and accreditation. Maintain our ISO/IEC 17025 QMS: the quality manual, SOP lifecycle, document and record control, and revision history. Own change control for methods, instruments, software, and procedures, including the impact assessment.

• Audit readiness, year-round. Run the internal audit program from scheduling through closure. When the accreditation body comes in, prepare for the assessment, host it, and close the findings with evidence.

• One standard across two sites. Keep the quality system consistent so a result means the same thing in Ann Arbor and Salt Lake City.

• The call on release. Do the initial review of out-of-specification and out-of-trend results, decide whether a result is fit to release, and escalate when it isn't.

• Investigations that close. Lead nonconformance, deviation, and CAPA investigations from initiation through root cause to effectiveness check. Investigate client complaints and quality inquiries, and write the responses.

• Data integrity. Hold LIMS records and instrument raw data to attributable, legible, contemporaneous, original, and accurate.

• The control chart program. Set limits, review charts on a defined cadence, and act on shifts and trends.

• Method and instrument performance. Manage proficiency testing and interlaboratory comparisons and investigate unsatisfactory scores. Support method validation and verification, including precision, accuracy, detection limits, and measurement uncertainty. Maintain equipment qualification and calibration records, track stability studies, and run the Environmental Monitoring Program.

• The numbers leadership sees. Report OOS rates, CAPA aging, PT performance, and on-time closure into management review, and flag the trends that point to process or equipment problems.

• Outside labs and suppliers. Qualify and monitor subcontracted and reference labs, review their results before they reach a client report, and evaluate the critical suppliers and consumables that affect result quality.

• Training and competency. Own analyst authorization, requalification, and the documented evidence that our analysts stay competent.

• Quality built in, not bolted on. Work with our software team to build quality checks directly into our LIMS and automation, and with technicians and chemists to keep standards consistent across every workflow.

• Staying current. Track changes to ISO/IEC 17025, FDA, and USP requirements and translate them into practice.

What You'll Need

• Owned a quality subsystem end to end (CAPA, internal audit, document control, training, or method validation) in an accredited testing lab or regulated manufacturing environment, as part of a longer run in quality.

• Supported an ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation assessment directly, with a working knowledge of the standard.

• Run OOS and deviation investigations, including root cause analysis and CAPA closure.

• Applied control chart methodology and QC trending in practice, not just on paper.

• Written investigations, SOPs, and audit responses that held up under review.

• Worked in LIMS and QMS software and speak the terminology.

• A degree in chemistry, biology, engineering, or a related field.

• Real communication skills and the confidence to lead. You'll be changing how people work when you find problems, so you need to explain the why, bring technicians and scientists along, and step into the Quality Director's shoes when needed.

• Ready to be on-site in Ann Arbor, MI, with regular time on the lab floor, PPE in lab areas, and occasional travel to Salt Lake City.

Nice to Have

• Dietary supplement, food, or consumer goods testing experience: heavy metals, pesticides, microbiology, or nutritional analysis

• FDA cGMP (21 CFR 111 or 117), USP methods, and state or retailer requirements such as Prop 65, CA AB 899, or Amazon

• Supervising or mentoring quality or lab staff

• Quality work across more than one site or lab

• ASQ CQA, CQE, or CMQ/OE certification, or formal internal auditor training

• Validating software or automated data flows in a regulated environment

Who We Are

Light Labs is building the modern platform for lab testing, starting with consumer goods brands: cheaper, faster testing that also automates regulatory compliance and drives revenue.

Our labs run LC-MS/MS, ICP-MS, HPLC, and GC-MS across food and supplement matrices, covering heavy metals, pesticides, glyphosate, PFAS, BPA/BPS, microplastics, mycotoxins, actives, and nutrients. We have 397 tests in the library and growing, and we're ISO 17025 accredited with low PT z-scores. Quality here is daily calibration, certified reference materials, control samples, blanks, and duplicates, because a number we release ends up on a product page and inside someone's compliance filing. Hundreds of food and supplement brands already test with us, including AG1, Chomps, David Protein, Seed Health, Momentous, and Little Spoon.

Consumers deserve to know what's actually in the products that affect their families' health, and transparency is what creates that informed customer. Beyond a faster, cheaper lab, we're building the infrastructure for brands to push lab data straight to their product pages (what's in it, what's not, claims verified) and automatically comply with regulations like Prop 65, CA AB 899, and Amazon's testing requirements.

That full loop, testing through customer-facing data, lets brands differentiate themselves and become the obvious choice in their category.

We run labs in Ann Arbor, MI and Salt Lake City, UT, with headquarters in Austin, TX. We're backed by 8VC and Valor Equity Partners, with CPG founders and strategics in the round. Everyone here, lab tech to engineer to sales, has a seat at the table in making the food system more transparent.

Our Mission

Everything we consume is getting more toxic and less nutritious, and the problem is invisible. You can't see, taste, or smell it:

• Cinnamon apple puree pouches, marketed for children and labeled preservative-free, kosher, and gluten-free, contained lead levels 200 times greater than the FDA's proposed guidelines.

• 87% of 650 children's food samples tested positive for glyphosate.

• Over 1,300 chemicals are banned in cosmetics in the EU, while only 11 are banned in the United States.

• The US allows thousands of food additives that are banned in other countries.

• A study of 168 baby foods found that 95% contained at least one heavy metal (arsenic, lead, mercury, cadmium), with a quarter containing all four.

• Seven out of eight samples of kale tested contained disturbing levels of PFAs, with organic kale containing even higher levels of the toxic compounds.

Testing for purity today is slow, expensive, and nearly impossible to interpret without a PhD. No feedback loop means no pressure to change, but if people knew what was actually in their food, they'd shop differently. Nothing changes until someone can measure it, publish it, and be right. You'd be the one making sure we're right.

Founding Team

• Nick Mares, 2x founder (Kettle & Fire, a $100M/year brand, and Upside Financing, exited 2022), $60M+ raised, CEO and COO experience, Thiel Fellow.

• Vijay Manohar, helped scale Samsara to $1B ARR and IPO (NYSE: IOT). B.S. computer engineering, UT Austin.

What You Get

• Top-decile salary, plus equity for every employee

• Full health, dental, and vision coverage

• Generous PTO and company holidays

• A promote-from-within lab that's adding sites, not consolidating them

Values We're Looking For

• First Principles. We're looking for team members who can deal with ambiguity, deconstruct problems, and build the optimal solution. Question every requirement, delete any part or process you can, simplify and optimize, accelerate cycle time, automate. That same instinct should make you curious enough to ask why something is done a certain way, and forward-looking enough to notice what won't hold up once we're 5 to 10 times this size.

• Standard of Excellence. High standards are contagious. A+ talent attracts A+ talent. There's a glut of mediocrity in the world. We're chasing after the products and people that strive for excellence.

• Bias for Action. Take initiative, make decisions quickly, and have a willingness to experiment and learn from failures. Customer expectations aren't static, they rise over time, which means we have to continuously improve every single day.

• Low Ego. Coachability: it's not about being right, it's about getting to the right answer. React calmly to criticism or negative feedback, treat feedback as an opportunity for information and improvement. Respectfully challenge decisions when you disagree, even when it's uncomfortable, and once a decision is made, commit wholly and move forward.

Why This Role

Brands trust our numbers enough to put them on their product pages, and that trust starts with quality. Every result you release ends up in front of a regulator or a parent deciding what to feed their kid, and you're the last set of eyes on it before it gets there.

This role comes with something rare in this field: the chance to shape a quality system while the company is still growing into it. We're adding labs. The standards you set in Ann Arbor will carry to Salt Lake City and every site after that.

If you want your work to count for more than passing the next audit, apply today.

Light Labs is an equal opportunity employer. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic.