Group Lead, Protein Team

Reporting to a Technical Director in this Cincinnati, Ohio based onsite role, you will lead a team of 4-6 technical professionals specializing in meat and poultry flavor creation and application. You will ensure team performance aligns with technical and commercial goals while driving project excellence and innovation.

• Customer Relationship and Technical Engagement Use meat and poultry sector insight, and alternative proteins understanding, to uncover new business opportunities and identify solutions. Translate customer needs into potential project briefs or proposals. Build trust-based relationships with technical counterparts at customer organizations to position us as a long-term innovation partner. Coordinate insights from customer interactions with both the technical team and account managers to help prioritize opportunities with the highest return.
  
  Strategically align with Protein customers processing capabilities to create proactive presentations.
• Collaboration and Partnership Collaborate with account managers to create proactive business development plans for strategic accounts. Be the technical contact at strategic customer accounts and promote our value proposition through expertise rather than purely commercial negotiation. Engage customers in technical discussions to uncover deeper process pain points or innovation opportunities. Be the credible "technical translator" between the customer's R&D/production teams and our technical team.
  
  Work with marketing team to gather Industry Intelligence and competitor activities specific to meat and poultry.
• Team Leadership and Project Preparedness Contribute to internal training or toolkits for broader team understanding of technical customer needs in the meat and poultry/alternative meat sector. Provide applicable insights to application teams to develop relevant product demonstrations. Advise and lead validation of selected technologies in applications replicating customers processing conditions. Oversee meat and poultry application labs within approved capital budgets. Ensure equipment capability, process reliability, and technical preparedness for successful project execution.

You?

• Bachelor's Degree in Food Science, Biology, or Business with relevant experience (Advanced education helpful)
• 10+ years' experience in Food Flavors
• 4+ years' experience in Leadership within Meat Category
• Exhibit in-depth meat and poultry processing knowledge encompassing marination and thermal processing techniques.
• Able to Travel 30%

Benefits include Major Medical, Dental, Vision, Life and Disability Insurance, Parental Leave and a High Matching 401k

Education and experience partly determine Job Title and Base Salary, and our compensation program guidelines do so. Percentage Annual Bonus also. Target base pay is $120k - $140k per year.