Agronomist - Othello, Washington

About the role

The Regional Agronomist executes the regional agricultural strategy developed with regional leadership and translates McCain's innovation priorities into practical, on-the-ground results. This role leads grower adoption of new potato varieties, regenerative practices, and emerging technologies while providing proactive crop risk intelligence. Working closely with growers, field teams, interns, and internal partners, the Regional Agronomist strengthens grower outcomes in yield, quality, cost, sustainability, and supply reliability.

Responsibilities

• Execute the regional innovation strategy to improve yield, quality, cost, sustainability, and supply outcomes.
• Lead the regional commercialization and adoption of new potato varieties by validating field and storage performance against McCain standards and demonstrating economic value to growers.
• Implement regenerative agriculture initiatives with adoption-ready growers, address agronomic and economic barriers, conduct field trials, and capture grower feedback.
• Pilot emerging agronomic technologies and production practices, assess real-world viability, cost-benefit trade-offs, and scalability, and provide field-level insights to leadership.
• Translate regional R&D priorities and recommendations into field and storage applications with grower partners, identifying and resolving adoption challenges.
• Build trusted grower relationships and serve as McCain's primary technical advisor and problem-solver for assigned grower partnerships.
• Lead crop monitoring and intelligence activities, escalating emerging crop, weather, pest, disease, storage, quality, or supply risks with supporting field data.
• Evaluate digital agriculture tools such as remote sensing, soil monitoring, predictive analytics, and AI-enabled solutions to improve monitoring and decision support.
• Manage and develop assigned interns and support staff through clear expectations, on-the-job training, coaching, and feedback.
• Develop subject matter expertise, facilitate peer learning, share regional insights across the Agronomist network, and represent McCain professionally in industry organizations and grower networks.

Requirements

• Bachelor of Science degree in Plant Science, Soil Science, Agricultural Production, or a related agricultural discipline.
• Valid driver's license and willingness to travel within the assigned region.
• Certified McCain Agronomist (CMA) certification within the first year of employment.
• Professional Agrologist certification required for Canada-based roles; Certified Crop Advisor (CCA) certification preferred.

Skills

• Strong agronomic knowledge, including crop production systems and potato production practices.
• Demonstrated ability to build productive relationships with growers and agricultural stakeholders and communicate across technical and business audiences.
• Sound technical judgment with the ability to assess agronomic risk, interpret field-level data, evaluate trade-offs, and make practical recommendations.
• Strong facilitation, project