Principal Scientist - Fresh Food Product Development

Responsibilities

• Technical Lead & Category Innovation: Serve as the primary technical lead and SME to drive the product design strategy for novel food forms and breakthrough offerings within the fresh pet food category.
• Process Engineering & Line Optimization: Direct the design, testing, and validation of production processes to optimize manufacturing lines, improve scale-up success, and ensure commercial viability.
• Cross-Functional Scale-Up & Validation: Partner closely with Supply Chain, Engineering, Quality, and Ingredient Procurement to deliver robust product designs.
• Oversee pilot and full-scale plant trials, validating product safety, quality, shelf-life, and palatability performance.
• Documentation & Regulatory Compliance: Oversee the commercial formulation documentation, define raw material and finished product specifications, and support intellectual property or patent filings in compliance with regulatory safety standards.

Qualifications

• Education: Master’s degree (MS) in Food Science, Food Engineering, or a closely related scientific field.
• Experience: 8+ years of food industry product development or process engineering experience.
• Commercialization Track Record: Demonstrated track record of successfully commercializing complex food products from concept through full-scale industrial manufacturing.
• Technical Mastery: Deep technical mastery of both formulation design (food science) and manufacturing technology (process engineering) identifiable from previous project history.