Technical Business Development Manager

About the Role

Plantible, backed by Astanor Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, Piva Capital, Kellogg’s, and Vectr Ventures, is a vertically integrated biology company that is unlocking the power in plants in service of people & planet. Our mission is to create solutions that empower customers to make sustainable and regenerative choices without compromising on quality. We are beginning with the food industry.

How You Will Contribute

This is a standalone commercial role, not a technical support function. You will own a named account list and carry the number on it, reporting to the Head of Commercial Development. Our R&D team runs the bench; you decide what gets run, why it gets run, and what the results mean for the customer and the business.

What You Will Be Working On

• Sell – Own a named account list. Prospect, qualify, close, reorder. Carry a number and report against it weekly. Negotiate pricing, volume commitments and development agreements.
• Translate Value – Map the customer formulation, process constraints and current ingredient cost stack. Specify and direct application trials. Internal and customer R&D execute; you set the hypothesis, read the result, and decide the next iteration. Quantify customer benefit: cost-in-use, functional replacement ratio, label and claim impact, process and yield benefit. Hold your own in a customer pilot plant. You do not need to run the trial. You need to know when the answer you are given is wrong.
• Innovate to Drive Change – BD Innovation: Ingredient qualification is slow by convention, not by physics. Find the conventions that do not apply to us and remove them. Product Innovation: Feed customer requirements back into product development and specification.

What You Bring To Plantible

• Sold functional ingredients into confectionery, bakery or condiments, and personally closed the deals you claim.
• 5+ years with functional ingredients. Proteins, hydrocolloids, emulsifiers, enzymes or starches. Command of gelation, aeration, emulsification, water binding and heat stability in real systems.
• Carried a quota in an early-stage ingredient business and grown a book from early revenue toward scale. Zero to $50M is the shape, not the threshold.
• Operated without infrastructure. No marketing team, no sales ops, no brand doing the work for you.
• Technical degree in food science, chemical engineering or equivalent, or equivalent fluency built in a lab or plant.

Preferred

• Hands-on product development: bench, pilot, sensory, shelf life, scale-up, spec, QA, regulatory. You know where a formulation breaks and why.
• Replaced an incumbent functional ingredient in a live commercial application and held the spec through scale-up. Egg, dairy protein, hydrocolloid or emulsifier.
• Took a novel ingredient through full customer qualification, including regulatory and supply-continuity objections.
• Founder or early commercial hire at a startup selling a physical product to industrial buyers.
• Standing relationships with R&D or procurement at major confectionery, bakery, condiment or CPG accounts.

Benefits

• Competitive health and wellness benefits – Medical, Dental and Vision Insurance
• Discretionary Unlimited PTO Program
• Paid Holidays
• 401k Program
• Career Stipend
• Career development and growth opportunities
• Working in a rapidly growing, flexible and entrepreneurial environment
• Team building and company-wide events
• Financial support with your relocation, if necessary, ensuring a smooth transition
• Lots of beautiful land for outdoor activities