Sr. Manager, Product Development, Culinary Innovation

Overview

The Sr. Product Developer plays a key role in managing complex culinary projects from ideation to launch. This includes the identification of the most appropriate product development steps, ingredient selection, packaging and food safety recommendation. The role requires very high hands on and problem solving attitudes and ability to take the appropriate short cut for a quick product launch, with no compromise on Food safety.

Responsibilities

Prototype and MVP Development:

• Guide the development of early culinary product prototypes based on product pipeline
•  Works on complex projects ensuring MVP, stakeholders alignment, proper P&L review and resources allocation
• Drives technical decision needed, reformulations, and recipe adjustments to align with gold-standard targets
• Guides proper product specification preparation and storage
• Provide guidance on product handling, quality challenges and packaing implications.
• Experience with Food Standars, trials and Protocols for Human Consumption.

Collaboration & Scale-Up Support:

• Work closely with the Chefs, Process development, Supply Chain and quality teams to deliver samples from ideation to launch products.
• Drives the troubleshooting during early-stage co-manufacturing or test production runs.
• Guide the Junior product developer/s in daily tasks for complex projects
• Is responsible to ensure traceability and food safety of kitchen and pilot plant samples

Qualifications

• Degree in Food Science, Culinary Innovation, Food Technology, Engineering, or related field preferred.
• 10 years of hands-on product development experience in food, culinary innovation, or R&D kitchens.
• FSQA experience is a major plus
• Comfortable in fast-paced, ambiguous R&D environments.
• Familiarity with pilot production or co-man processes.
• Excellent organization, documentation, collaboration and communication skills.
• Ability to find solutions and proactivity complete the profile