About Tovala

We're Tovala, a food-tech company completely reinventing home cooking to save consumers time. Through an innovative combination of hardware, software, and food, we give our customers a way to enjoy really good, good-for-you meals without sacrificing time to do whatever matters to them. We've amassed a loyal, rapidly growing following in just a few years, radically changing the day-to-day lives of people across the country and successfully creating a new model for the food industry. We're looking for great people to join our team of hard-working, food-loving nerds.

Job Description

As a Manufacturing Engineer at Tovala, you would join our food production team in Chicago, where we operate multiple food production facilities. You would be responsible for helping us scale our operations both within our existing facility network, as well as at additional facilities as we open them, by improving on our methods for producing food, and introducing new processes. You will be responsible for identifying inefficiencies within our existing food production techniques, designing solutions to eliminate them, and implementing those solutions on the production floor. You will also be responsible for identifying opportunities for automation as well as improvements/upgrades to existing machinery to increase the throughput and capacity of our facilities. You will join a small, fast-paced group of engineers working to scale a business that is rapidly growing.

How you’ll spend your time at Tovala

• Working with the Operations  team to study labor and equipment utilization in our food production process to identify bottlenecks and capacity limitations
• Designing, testing, and implementing food production process improvements that will enable Tovala to scale as a business, eliminating both bottlenecks and capacity limitations
• Collaborating with plant management at each of our facilities to identify opportunities for both process improvement and automation
• Identifying, evaluating, comparing, and performing cost-benefit analyses on selecting and introducing production equipment to increase the throughput of our facilities
• Defining and enhancing company standard operating procedures throughout the food production operation to reduce error rates and improve efficiency
• Learning completely new skills and taking on new challenges

About you

• You have 4 to 6 years of engineering experience in manufacturing environments
• You have a BS or MS (or equivalent experience) in industrial engineering or a similar field
• You have a strong and demonstrable track record of improving facility throughput and/or efficiency through process improvement and/or implementation of automation
• You have a strong understanding of how machines are constructed and work. You can quickly master and subsequently train others to use different tools
• You have trouble watching an episode of “How It’s Made” without trying to spot ways that they could have made it better
• You are empathetic and you work effectively with teammates by taking the time to really understand what they need from you
• You enjoy deep technical challenges and defining your own work
• You want to work in an environment that:
• Takes a people-first approach
• Values humility, integrity, and ambition
• Is focused on creating a culture that keeps people happy and challenged
• You love food, whether that means cooking it, eating it, frequently pressing your nose against deli windows, or lusting after soft-serve on Instagram. All fair game.