Operational Excellence Associate

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.

What you will do:

In this role, you’ll be right on the factory floor helping bring LOMS to life across multiple manufacturing sites. You’ll support deployments, run floor walks, train operators and supervisors, and make sure new processes and standards actually work in real-world conditions. Your job is to make the complex simple and help teams embed new ways of working with confidence.

You’ll build strong relationships with production, warehouse, fulfilment, and maintenance teams, coaching them on lean principles and supporting them through change. You’ll observe day-to-day operations, spot inefficiencies or risks, and reinforce best practices through hands-on guidance, small-group sessions, toolbox talks, and refreshers.

Continuous improvement will be a key part of your work. You’ll help identify improvement opportunities, support activities like 5S, waste reduction and root-cause analysis, and follow up with teams to ensure improvements stick. You’ll document actions, share insights, and help leaders understand what’s happening on the floor.

Because digital tools are core to how we operate, you’ll assist operators and supervisors with systems like Tractian, SafetyCulture, NetSuite (WMS), our OEE system, and Omni dashboards. You’ll troubleshoot basic issues, support accurate data entry, and flag anything that needs escalation.

You’ll also help keep data, dashboards, and documentation up to date. That includes collecting information for reporting, maintaining visual management boards, updating SOPs and work instructions, and supporting compliance requirements so the team is always audit-ready.

Requirements

What we're looking for:

You might have 1–2 years of experience in manufacturing, food production, or FMCG, but we’re also open to people earlier in their career who are eager to get stuck in and learn. What matters most is your communication style, your ability to build rapport with operators and leaders, and your comfort working on the factory floor every day.

You’ll be someone who enjoys solving problems, spotting opportunities to improve processes, and jumping in to help teams understand new systems or standards. You’re organised, detail-focused, and not afraid to ask questions when something doesn’t look right. An interest in continuous improvement, lean thinking, or operational systems will go a long way.

If you’re someone who thrives in a hands-on environment, enjoys working closely with people, and wants to grow your skills in operations and CI, we’d love to hear from you.

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.