Product Development Manager

About the role

Ritual is looking for a Product Development Manager to support innovation, new product development as well as brand maintenance. In this role, you’ll apply your expertise to manage nutrition innovations, ideation, and the development of science-based product formulas. This role is highly cross-functional, you will partner with Innovation strategy, Science, QA, Reg and Operations to innovate and develop products for successful launches. Someone with a passion for traceability and transparency from formulation to customer communication is highly desirable. This is a great opportunity to join a rapidly expanding organization and take on responsibilities that are key to our continued growth.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate on projects and develop products with internal R&D teams, third party contract manufacturers/formulation labs, and flavor houses.
• Drive formulation, product development and scale up from concept to launch utilizing Stage-GATE processes.
• Conduct product review assessments to define success criteria for pilot and production runs.
• Lead and coordinate prototype work, sensory evaluations over multiple product formats (capsules, powders, and others).
• Manage product testing, utilizing expertise and experience for testing product efficacy, validating new claims and developing product specifications.
• Work closely with Marketing and Regulatory Affairs leadership to support marketing initiatives and brand assets (i.e. label copy, web content, marketing collateral etc.).
• Collaborate with project leaders, project managers, and operations teams to drive projects to meet cost targets and launch dates.
• Actively work on continuous improvement plans interpreting consumer insights to revise existing products.
• Proactively stay on top of key product and regulatory trends that can unlock growth opportunities for our business in the product, ingredient or communications space.

Requirements

• BS in Pharmaceutical Science, Food Science, Chemistry, Biology, Engineering, or other related science.
• 3+ years product development, formulation chemistry, commercialization, or other related science.
• Experience in the nutraceutical and supplement industry is a must.

Qualifications

• Strong experience in developing different formats including capsules, powders and other VMS formats.
• Expertise in developing product specifications, product protocols, risk analysis and product reviews.
• Experience with evaluating flavors and product sensory evaluation.
• Knowledge of ingredient efficacy, raw material qualification programs, cGMP, regulatory affairs, stage-gate processes, consumer insights, and project management.
• Good to have nutraceutical supplier contacts and an ingredient database.

Skills

• Operational Excellence: Strong organizational skills with exceptional attention to detail and the ability to manage multiple priorities simultaneously.
• Passion for Science: You apply rigorous logic, experimentation, and data to support claims and innovation.
• Product‑Minded: You bridge user needs, business context, and execution to deliver features and solutions that work—and measure what matters.
• Technical Acumen: You bring deep knowledge in your area (e.g., science, engineering, operations, analytics) and apply it to real‑world challenges.
• Insight‑Gatherer: You seek diverse data sources, customer insights, and front