Food & beverage · week of October 19, 2026
Food & beverage plant jobs: 769 open roles at 33 manufacturers
Who's hiring plant engineers, technicians and supervisors in food & beverage, what it pays, and the skills they ask for.
How food & beverage compares with other industries →
- 769
- open plant roles
- 216
- posted in the last 7 days
- 33
- manufacturers hiring
- $84k–$113k
- typical engineering base
28% of all openings
Smithfield Foods, Niagara Bottling, Tyson Foods
-11% vs the US
The takeaways
- 1
Reliability has the most openings in Food & beverage: 369 roles, ahead of production (175).
- 2
$95k–$133k is the typical base for manufacturing engineers, the best-paid team here (8 postings list pay).
- 3
11% below the US typical engineering base: Food & beverage pays $84k–$113k.
- 4
Smithfield Foods is hiring the most, with 109 open plant roles, 22 of them new this week.
Explore by team
Openings and pay, team by team
Tap a team to see its skills and hirers.
Open roles
openposted this week
Typical base pay (engineers and senior engineers)
- ManufacturingBest paid$95k–$133k
- Controls$89k–$133k
- Lean / CI$89k–$133k
- Process$82k–$112k
Skills plants name most
- Team leadership#1 ask63%
- PLC27%
- Root cause27%
- FDA / GMP23%
- SAP18%
Top 5 shown. See all of them →
Hiring the most
- 1Smithfield Foods109
- 2Niagara Bottling92
- 3Tyson Foods73
- 4Conagra Brands49
- + the rest of the top hirers with a free account
By state
Where the plant jobs are
Tap a state for its report.
Top 5:1. California 1,3052. Texas 9223. Ohio 5014. Michigan 4435. Illinois 360
Who plants are hiring
Engineers, techs and supervisors
220 engineering and Lean / CI roles; 549 technician and supervisor roles on the same teams.
- Engineer96 · 12%
- Senior22 · 3%
- Manager / lead102 · 13%
- Supervisor194 · 25%
- Technician355 · 46%
How fresh
When these roles went up
Roles posted in the last two weeks get the fastest replies from teams.
- This week216
- 8–14 days87
- 15–30 daysMost420
- 30+ days30
- Date not listed16
Where
Top cities
- Chicago, ILMost roles13
- Longmont, CO12
- Emporia, KS12
- Indianapolis, IN11
- Sioux Falls, SD11
Go deeper: what moves pay
Belt and license premiums, pay by years asked, skills that come as a package, and the unusual perks plants offer.
Source and method
- Source
- ShopFloorJobs analysis of 769 live plant job postings from 33 manufacturers' own careers sites (Workday, SuccessFactors, Oracle, iCIMS, Greenhouse and others), not job boards.
- Collected
- Week of October 19, 2026. Postings are re-checked daily; closed roles drop out.
- Method
- Each posting is counted once per role and city. Teams and levels are read from the job title; pay is the middle of each posting's listed range, for engineer and senior engineer levels, shown where at least 3 postings list one; skills are counted when the posting names them.
Cite this report
ShopFloorJobs, "Food & beverage plant jobs report, week of October 19, 2026," Week of October 19, 2026. https://shopfloorjobs.com/reports/industry/food-and-beverage
Free to quote and share with a link to this page.