Industrial Engineer - Kitchen Venture Operations Systems

AVF is a startup studio dedicated to fostering innovation and technological advancement. The company embraces the latest design tools and leverages artificial intelligence to drive forward-thinking projects. Emerging from stealth mode, AVF prides itself on a vibrant culture that encourages creativity, collaboration, and the relentless pursuit of excellence.

At AVF, the focus is on identifying and developing groundbreaking technologies that can improve people’s lives and then nurturing them into viable commercial enterprises. The rich experiences of our team are invaluable assets in building and growing AVF's portfolio of startups.

The Role

We are hiring an Industrial Engineer to design, build, and hand off the operating systems that power a prepared food venture. This role sits within the central operations function and is deployed into the kitchen to understand how work gets done – then build the tools, dashboards, and standards that allow the kitchen team to run efficiently without ongoing support from central office.

You will work closely with the Kitchen Purchasing & Inventory Coordinator, who will run the systems you build day-to-day. But the broader kitchen team – chefs, operators, and kitchen leadership – are equally central to this role. Building genuine working relationships with the people on the floor is not a soft skill here; it is a core requirement. The best systems come from genuinely understanding how work actually gets done, and that only happens through trust.

Success in this role is not only measured by the quality of what you design – it is measured by whether the kitchen team uses it, trusts it, and couldn’t imagine working without it.

This is an onsite position based at our headquarters in Billerica, MA, with regular travel to our Kitchen Operations center in Concord, NH.

What You’ll Do:

Build Relationships with the Kitchen Team

• Spend meaningful time on the floor before designing anything – observe, ask questions, and understand how the team works before proposing changes
• Co-design processes and tools with the kitchen team rather than presenting finished solutions
• Build enough trust that the team brings you problems, not just feedback on things you’ve already built
• Bring patience, humility, and consistency to every interaction- changes to how a kitchen runs can feel personal

Build Live Operational Dashboards & Reporting Tools

• Design and build live dashboards that surface labor, cost, throughput, and waste in real time
• Implement reliable, low-friction data collection methods that operators can maintain without your help
• Define KPIs, calculation logic, and reporting cadences – then hand them off to the Kitchen Purchasing & Inventory Coordinator
• Ensure dashboards are simple enough to be used daily by non-technical kitchen team members
• Provide central office with the visibility tools they need to oversee kitchen performance without being on site

Design & Standardize Processes

• Map current workflows on the floor;  identify bottlenecks, variability, and waste–Design repeatable, scalable processes and document them for use without you present
• Create handoff-ready standard operating procedures (SOPs) in partnership with kitchen leadership

Build Capacity & Planning Models

• Conduct time studies and capacity analysis to establish throughput standards
• Build models to evaluate capacity, volume, and tradeoffs to support planning decisions
• Develop staffing models that leadership can use for scaling decisions
• Optimize batching, picking, and packing workflows for accuracy, speed, and consistency

Build & Maintain the Demand Forecasting Tool

• Build and maintain the demand forecasting tool, drawing on sales data, order history, and promotional data to produce forward-looking volume and ingredient requirements
• Work with the kitchen team to jointly determine par levels and purchasing triggers for different ingredient types –knowledge of the food and your knowledge of the data both matter
• Collaborate with Finance to validate the commercial assumptions: growth rates, seasonal factors, promotional uplifts
• Produce clear, actionable forecast outputs that the Purchasing & Inventory Coordinator can use to make buying decisions with confidence
• Keep the model current – refresh assumptions regularly and improve the tool as the business grows and data matures

Connect Operations to Systems

• Translate operational needs into system requirements and partner with engineering to build tools that support real workflows
• Build and maintain a cohesive operating system across tools and teams, regularly refreshing the model to equip the Purchasing & Inventory Coordinator to make buying decisions based on it

Hand Off & Enable

• Every system you build must be documented, trained out, and validated as adopted before moving on
• Act as an internal consultant to the Purchasing & Inventory Coordinator – available for troubleshooting and iteration, not daily operation
• Surface new improvement opportunities as the business scales and repeat the build-document-handoff cycle

What We’re Looking For:

• 5 years’ experience in Industrial Engineering, Operations, or similar
• Proven ability to build systems that others adopt and use – not just theoretical designs
• Strong analytical skills (Excel required; SQL/Python a plus)
• Experience building dashboards or reporting tools (Power BI, Tableau, Google Looker, or similar)
• Background in a physical operations environment (manufacturing, food, warehouse, etc.)
• Exceptional interpersonal skills and genuine curiosity about how people work – this role lives or dies on the relationships you build with the kitchen team
• Experience with labor modeling, capacity planning, or demand forecasting tools is a plus
• High ownership mindset with equal comfort handing off ownership once systems are built

What Makes This Role Unique?

• You will build from scratch – no inherited legacy tools or systems to work around
• You will own the forecasting tool that sits at the intersection of kitchen knowledge, sales data, and financial planning
• Your impact is measured by adoption and outcomes, not activity
• You will work directly with operators, engineers, and leadership- not in a siloed function
• This role offers a path to broader ownership of operations systems as the business scales

AVF is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds who are excited to build systems that make a real difference! If you're energized by the idea of creating something from scratch and handing it off to a team that actually uses it, we'd love to hear from you.