Vice President – Food Testing Laboratory Operations (WISEcode Labs)
wisecode · Kannapolis, North Carolina, United States · onsite
This role is for a position at WISEcode labs, WISEcode's sister company and an independent third party testing lab.
--
WISEcode Labs, formerly Beaconpoint Labs, was built out of necessity.
The laboratory was created to support its sister company WISEcode and its Food Genome Project™, an ambitious effort to build a comprehensive food and ingredient intelligence platform. In pursuing that goal, it became clear that the required testing capabilities simply did not exist. No laboratory could reliably deliver the breadth, depth, speed, and transparency needed to analyze thousands of ingredients across hundreds of analytes with confidence. Rather than compromise, the lab was built to solve that problem properly.
WISEcode Labs is an independent third-party testing laboratory serving food, beverage, dietary supplement, ingredient, and adjacent consumer-health companies. The lab combines advanced analytical instrumentation, rigorous method development, microbiology and chemistry expertise, and a high-touch service model designed for customers with complex and recurring testing needs.
WISEcode Labs is differentiated by its unwavering focus on food safety and nutrition testing and becoming a primary testing partner to key customers, owing to its rapid response time and direct access to scientific leaders, customized solutions, and defensible data.
Effective August 25th 2026, the company unified its brand with its sister company under a single name: WISEcode Labs. The next phase is to scale this platform without losing the quality, speed, independence, confidentiality, and accountability on which the business was built to be the preferred testing & scientific partner for the food industry and WISEcode’s mission towards food transparency.
Why This Role Matters Now:
- WISEcode Labs is entering a defining phase. The laboratory infrastructure, scientific leadership, and testing platform are firmly in place, and early customer success has validated both the technical capabilities and the service model.
- The company has strengthened its leadership team charged with sharpening the brand, deepening customer relationships, and in the process of translating differentiated capability into durable financial performance and growth.
- That commercial mandate depends on an equally strong operating counterpart. The next chapter requires a leader who can run the laboratory with precision: scaling utilization and throughput, protecting quality and turnaround time for key customer routine tests as non-negotiables, and building the systems, staffing model, and cadence that let a highly technical organization scale without losing what makes it distinctive. The VP of Operations will be the executive accountable for that repeatable and profitable operating system.
- A candidate with strong scientific fluency who can also credibly own method development, instrumentation expansion and R & D strategy alongside day-to-day operations is highly attractive.
The Opportunity:
- We are seeking a hands-on, technically fluent, data-driven operations leader who can build while operating: optimize daily execution, increase throughput and instrument utilization, staff planning and accountability, and develop leaders capable of sustaining performance as the laboratory expands. The leader will work closely with the CEO and leadership team to deliver operational excellence driven by KPIs and commercial outcomes.
- This leader will shape the operating model across sample receiving, scheduling, courier management for customers in 200 mile radius, testing execution, analysis, review, customer reporting, and continuous improvement. The leader will partner closely with leadership, quality and scientific team to deliver growth in our scientific capabilities and testing menu aligning with our strategy and our commitment to ISO 17025 discipline, data integrity, safety, and customer trust.
Position Summary:
- Reporting to the Chief Executive Officer, the VP of Operations will lead end-to-end laboratory operations and serve as a core member of the executive leadership team. The role owns operating performance to deliver operational excellence KPIs, laboratory capacity, labor productivity, turnaround time, cost of service, diligent capital deployment, and the consistent execution of the company’s quality and safety requirements.
- The VP will translate commercial demand into an integrated operating plan; lead the laboratory team, supervisors, and technical staff; and establish the management routines, metrics, and problem-solving discipline required to scale.
- This is an onsite leadership role for an operator who is visible on the laboratory floor, close to customers and sales team, and equally comfortable with daily execution and multi-year growth strategy.
What Success Looks Like:
- In the first 90 days:
- • Build a consistent operating cadence across the lab and develop a fact-based baseline of capacity, labor productivity, instrument utilization, retests, cost per test, courier logistics and customer metrics like turnaround time and quality.
- • Establish clear ownership and responsibilities across Operations, Quality, and R&D
- • Implement a daily and weekly operating process for lab team with defined KPIs connecting operational performance to commercial goals.
- • Identify the few constraints that most limit reliable throughput to deliver business goals and deliver an agreed improvement plan.
- • Ensure success of our customer portal adoption by coordinating with sales and the operating team.
- • Deep analysis of our current testing mix and growth opportunities for both external customers and our sister company WISEcode to ensure seamless execution as the operation scales to meet the growing needs of our customers.
- In the first 6 months:
- • Deliver targeted throughput, cost of sales & margin improvements, and aligned customer metrics like turnaround time performance, retests and other agreed business KPIs.
- • Build and execute a demand-and-capacity planning process that connects sales forecasts, sample mix, staffing, shifts, instrument availability, maintenance, and capital deployment.
- • Improve gross margin and operating leverage through higher utilization, labor productivity, workflow standardization, purchasing discipline, and better cost visibility—without compromising quality.
- • Strengthen and optimize the team bench through clear expectations, coaching, cross-training, succession planning, and rigorous performance management. Conduct quarterly reviews to evaluate performance against set goals and establish a performance management system along with the CEO and leadership team.
- • Execute Phase 2 of our customer portal integrated with the LIMS/QBench and ensure data integrity so workflow status, sample traceability, KPIs, and client commitments are visible and actionable.
- • Partner with Quality to sustain audit readiness, proficiency, method adherence, document control, CAPA effectiveness, and ISO/IEC 17025 compliance.
- In 12 months:
- • Establish a fully optimized operating platform capable of supporting materially higher sample volume and an expanded testing menu with consistent quality, service, and economics.
- • Institutionalize continuous improvement, establish talent density across the lab’s testing capability, and operational excellence consistently meeting set KPIs and commercial metrics.
- • Establish WISEcode Labs as a best-in-class laboratory operating partner for the food idustry —known for scientific integrity, responsiveness, reliable turnaround, and disciplined execution.
Key Responsibilities:
- End-to-End Laboratory Operations — Own daily execution from sample receiving through final report release; balance priorities across chemistry, microbiology, sample preparation, review, and client commitments. Establish clear service levels, production schedules, handoffs, escalation rules, and accountability for on-time delivery.
- Quality, Compliance & Safety — Operate in