Sr. Food Technologist; Beverage

At Niagara, we’re looking for Team Members who want to be part of achieving our mission to provide our customers the highest quality most affordable bottled water.

• Work in an entrepreneurial and dynamic environment with a chance to make an impact.
• Develop lasting relationships with great people.
• Have the opportunity to build a satisfying career.

We offer competitive compensation and benefits packages for our Team Members.

The Sr. Food Technologist is responsible to lead development of new flavored beverages, line extensions and value engineering projects. The incumbent will also act as a conduit to the cross functional teams, including but not limited to: marketing, sales, quality, procurement, and manufacturing.

• Lead primary development of beverages either internally or through working with external partners like flavor companies.
• Formulate products to achieve target flavor and nutritional profile, and label claims, while keeping cost in mind.
• Be technical lead on beverage formulations, ingredient functionalities, and the different processing capabilities at Niagara.
• Act as technical expert during commissioning of new formulas by applying key knowledge of ingredient functionalities, formulas, and processes, as well as troubleshooting skills to ensure successful scale-up.
• Independently develop specifications for finished products and ingredients.
• Manage internal sensory evaluations to determine product acceptability and provide summary and recommendations to proceed.
• Support Sales objectives by in/directly interact with target/key customers in support of existing and new business growth opportunities.
• Lead evaluation of ingredients for shelf life extensions and support various manufacturing plants with cost avoidance.
• Keep abreast of new ingredients, technologies, and processes that are applicable to Niagara product portfolios.
• Maintain records of documents during development process independently with great attention to accuracy and details that will allow repeatability of data. This includes, but is not limited to: lab notebooks, analytical/organoleptic and sensory test results, formulas, and specifications.
• Ensure streamlined communications between Product Development, Marketing, Supply Chain, Procurement, PLM, QA, Operations and Sales to maintain great rapport with all cross functional teams and ensuring awareness of key project milestones.
• Responsible for producing (or work with flavor houses to produce) samples for customer evaluations while ensuring product specifications and safety are met.
• Collaborate with QA, tech service, and operations to conduct line trials of new formulations to verify manufacturing feasibilities.

Travel requirements: 10-25%

Please note this job description is not designed to contain a comprehensive list of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities and activities may change at any time with or without prior notice.

• Minimum Qualifications:
  
  4 Years – Experience in Beverage Product Development and Commercialization
  * experience may include a combination of work experience and education
• Preferred Qualifications:
  
  6 Years – Experience in Beverage Product Development and Commercialization
  * experience may include a combination of work experience and education

• Proficiency in, but not limited to:
  Strong understanding of ingredients and its functionality used in the beverage industry, Strong understanding of product development processes and different manufacturing processes preferably in sparkling/carbonated soft drinks Demonstrated excellent problem solving, continuous improvement and strategic thinking skills with very minimal guidance.
• Ab…