Fulfilment Team Leader (Afternoon Shift)

About Lyka:

Lyka was founded in 2018 by Anna Podolsky, inspired by her dog, Lyka, who was suffering from chronic health issues despite being on “premium” kibble. Together with Gabriel Guedes (COO) and Dr. Matthew Muir (Integrative Veterinarian), they built Lyka from the ground up with one core belief: better food can radically improve a pet’s healthspan and quality of life.

Lyka’s meals are vet-formulated and gently cooked from real food ingredients. Delivered via a flexible subscription model, Lyka meals have driven remarkable improvements for tens of thousands of customers, supporting gut health, reducing intolerances, improving energy and mobility, and even promoting hair growth.

What began as home-cooked meals has since scaled into one of Australia’s fastest-growing consumer companies, a vertically integrated, tech-enabled brand that is transforming pet health nationwide.

Lyka now operates from two offices, Sydney (HQ) and Melbourne, with three state-of-the-art food production facilities (two in Sydney, one in Melbourne) and a growing national footprint.

At Lyka, we’re not just selling pet food—we’re pioneering a new standard of wellness for pets. With strong product-market fit, deep customer love, and a track record of rapid growth, we’re now entering our most ambitious chapter yet: building a generational brand and category-defining business with global impact.


About the role:

Lyka makes fresh dog food that's changing how Australians feed their pets, and our fulfillment floor is where that promise gets packed, checked, and sent out the door. We're looking for a Fulfilment Team Leader to own our afternoon shift: the equipment, the people, the output, and the standard, from the moment your shift starts to the moment you hand it over.

This isn't a role where you follow a checklist. You'll be the person Operators come to when something breaks, the person who decides how the shift runs, and the person accountable for hitting our numbers safely and to spec, with minimal oversight once the day shift clocks off. You'll report to the Fulfillment Manager and work daily alongside Maintenance, Quality, and Supply Chain to keep fulfillment moving and improving, and you'll own a clean, accurate handover for the team that follows you.


What you will do:

You'll lead and coach a team of Operators, owning rosters, timesheets, and the day-to-day people decisions that keep your afternoon shift fully resourced and pulling in the same direction. You'll run the floor, troubleshooting equipment issues, chasing down bottlenecks, and owning KPIs like OEE, yield, scrap, and downtime across every section under your leadership.

You'll oversee how raw materials, WIP, and finished goods move through the site, and you'll take waste, inventory accuracy, and shipping/receiving seriously, not as admin, but as levers you actively manage. Quality and food safety sit squarely with you too: you'll embed 5S, run CCP/QCP checks, escalate non-conformances fast, and lead root cause analysis when something goes wrong.

Safety is non-negotiable. You'll champion a proactive safety culture, lead incident investigations when needed, and make sure PPE, lockout/tagout, and guarding compliance are second nature across your team. And because standing still isn't good enough, you'll drive continuous improvement, Lean, Six Sigma, kaizen, turning your Operators into problem-solvers, not just process-followers.

Requirements

You've led a production or fulfillment team before, ideally in food manufacturing or a comparable regulated environment, and you know what it takes to run a shift under real KPI pressure while keeping people and product safe. You're comfortable working with less direct oversight than a day-shift leader, comfortable reading production data and turning it into action, and comfortable making the call when something needs a decision now, not tomorrow. You lead from the floor, not from behind a desk, and you build capability in the people around you rather than just directing them.

You're organised enough to own rosters, records, and CMMS/SHEQMS data entry without it becoming a bottleneck, and you're calm under the kind of pressure that comes with multiple sections, competing priorities, and a fast-moving site. Food safety knowledge (HACCP, GMP) is a strong advantage.

Benefits

• Work in a fast-growing start-up, experiencing what goes on behind the scenes to sustain hyper-growth for a start-up with a physical product!
• Growth and Development – Lyka is growing extremely quickly, which means you will have the opportunity to experience different challenges every day and progressively acquire more responsibilities as our facility and team expand. We provide an annual L&D budget for you to continue your personal development.
• Work for a sustainability-focused company – we care about the health of our dogs and our planet. We’re proud to be Australia’s only carbon-negative and plastic-negative pet wellness company and we’re always looking at ways for us to improve sustainability practices.
• Be part of a diverse top-talent team, coming from widely different backgrounds and geographies.
• Up to 18 weeks of paid parental leave top-up
• Wellbeing assistance and tools to take care of your mental and physical wellbeing so you can do your best work
• Pupper parent support to care for your furry friends – flexible arrangements for new pets, pet-friendly offices, discounts, and financial allowance for dog training and care to help them live their best life!

We are committed to building inclusive and diverse teams

Lyka is an equal-opportunity employer devoted to providing a working environment that embraces and values diversity and inclusion. We celebrate diversity, are devoted to creating an inclusive environment for all staff and encourage people of all backgrounds to apply. If you have any support or access requirements, we encourage you to advise us at the time of application.