About This Role
Leading complex innovation, renovation, productivity, and platform development programs is the core of this Food Scientist role. The position involves leveraging scientific expertise, creativity, and leadership to bring health through food, delight consumers, and drive business growth within the Research & Innovation team.
Responsibilities
- Lead complex innovation, renovation, productivity, and platform development programs, ensuring successful delivery against consumer, quality, food safety, regulatory, operational, cost, and business objectives
- Serve as the R&I technical leader within cross-functional teams, influencing project direction, translating business needs into technical solutions, and driving stakeholder alignment
- Design and lead technical development strategies, bench work experiments, industrial trials, product evaluations, and consumer validation activities to generate insights, anticipate risks, and build robust commercialization plans
- Apply advanced expertise in product formulation, ingredient functionality, processing, and manufacturing to solve complex technical challenges and deliver scalable solutions
- Develop and maintain ingredient specifications, finish-good specifications, and other technical documentation to ensure products are commercialization-ready and meet all quality and compliance requirements
- Collaborate with suppliers, co-manufacturers, internal technical experts, and manufacturing sites to identify novel technologies, capabilities, and solutions that advance category objectives
- Contribute to category and innovation strategy by scoping new ideas, driving technical recommendations, identifying emerging opportunities, and championing continuous improvement
- Mentor junior scientists, lead complex technical discussions, and strengthen R&I capabilities through knowledge sharing and technical leadership
Requirements
- Degree in Dairy Science or Food Science or related technical field (Master's degree preferred) with 5-10 years of relevant experience
- Advanced understanding of dairy and/or fermented product formulation, ingredient functionality, processing technologies, and manufacturing systems
- Demonstrated success leading complex product development projects and programs from concept through commercialization with a strong attention to detail and excellence in execution
- Strong technical troubleshooting, risk assessment, and problem-solving capabilities
- Experience leading industrial scale-up, commercialization, and post-launch activities
- Proven ability to influence decisions across functions and organizational levels
- Creative, proactive and self-driven with a continuous improvement and growth mindset
- Excellent leadership, communication, and stakeholder management skills
