Senior Food Scientist

Overview

This temporary Senior Food Scientist – Bakery and Snacking role offers the opportunity to lead high-impact product development projects over an anticipated 5-month period, providing maternity leave coverage. You will own product development and innovation activities from benchtop through scale-up and commercialization for nut-based spreads, fillings, confectionery applications, baked crackers, cookies, snack bars, and other snacking products. Working closely with ingredient and culinary teams, you will deliver customer-focused solutions, maintain project continuity, and support both internal and customer-facing initiatives across North America.

• Lead end-to-end product development from concept through commercialization for bakery and snacking products, including nut-based spreads, fillings, confectionery items, baked crackers, cookies, snack bars, and other snack applications.
• Translate project briefs (for example, reducing sugar content in baked goods such as muffins) into practical development plans, generate multiple formulation options, and select the best-performing prototypes based on sensory, performance, and customer requirements.
• Design, develop, and optimize formulations to meet sensory, shelf-life, nutritional, cost, food safety, regulatory, and customer-specific requirements.
• Conduct benchtop formulation work, including ideation, ingredient selection, mixing, and baking, to create and refine prototypes for internal review and customer presentations.
• Plan and execute pilot plant trials, including preparation of materials, coordination with operations teams, and adjustment of process parameters to ensure successful scale-up.
• Lead scale-up validation, plant trials, and first production runs, troubleshooting formulation and process issues to ensure manufacturability, quality, and consistency.
• Collaborate with ingredient specialists in cocoa, nuts, spices, coffee, and other ingredient categories to develop differentiated solutions that align with customer needs and market trends.
• Coordinate and manage materials for bench, pilot, and plant trials, ensuring timely availability of ingredients, packaging, and other required resources.
• Develop and prepare prototypes for customer meetings, innovation sessions, and trade shows, clearly communicating product benefits, ingredient stories, and technical attributes.
• Conduct analytical and functional testing on prototypes and finished products, including texture, moisture, stability, and other relevant quality attributes.
• Plan and execute sensory evaluations and shelf-life or stability studies, interpret results, and use findings to refine formulations and processes.
• Document formulations, specifications, processing parameters, nutritional calculations, standard operating procedures (SOPs), and other technical documentation in an accurate and timely manner.
• Maintain and update technical documentation systems, including specification databases and formulation tools, to ensure data integrity and traceability.
• Support project transitions and handoff summaries, ensuring clear communication of status, risks, and next steps to internal stakeholders.
• Work cross-functionally with R&D, culinary, quality, regulatory, procurement, marketing, commercial teams, manufacturing sites, co-manufacturers, ingredient suppliers, and customer teams to drive projects forward.
• Ensure compliance with food safety, regulatory, and labeling requirements throughout the product development and commercialization process.
• Manage multiple projects and priorities in a fast-paced environment, balancing customer deadlines, internal initiatives, and innovation pipelines.
• Provide technical support during customer visits, plant trials, and production start-ups, including on-site troubleshooting and process optimization.
• Use tools such as Microsoft Office and preferred systems like Genesis and Salesforce to manage projects, document work, and communicate with stakeholders.
• Contribute to a culture of collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement within the bakery and snacking category and the broader organization.

• Bachelor’s degree in Food Science, Food Technology, Food Engineering, or a related field.
• 3–5 years of research and development (R&D) experience, preferably within the food industry.
• Hands-on food product development experience, ideally in bakery, snacking, confectionery, nut-based spreads, fillings, crackers, cookies, snack bars, or commercial bakery applications.
• Proven ability to lead product development from concept through commercialization, including ideation, formulation, bench work, sensory evaluation, shelf-life and stability testing, pilot plant trials, plant trials, and first production runs.
• Strong understanding of ingredient functionality, including fats, sugars, proteins, hydrocolloids, cocoa, nuts, spices, coffee, and other functional ingredients used in bakery and confectionery systems.
• Demonstrated experience translating bench-top formulas into…