R&D- Application Development Manager

Job Description

The R&D – Manager of Commercial Applications is responsible for overseeing the application laboratory and leading the development and optimization of product applications. This role serves as a subject matter expert, particularly in rheology and product application supporting both internal stakeholders and external customers within the Industrial Wood Division. The role also serves as a technical applications expert for both existing and new customers, actively engaging in customer meetings to provide training and explain modifications made to application lines, ensuring adoption of best practices to achieve optimized performance of Industrial Wood (IW) products.

Externally, the R&D – Manager Commercial Applications focuses on aligning lab capabilities with customer‑specific processes to effectively simulate real‑world application conditions, enabling robust product validation and continuous improvement initiatives. This includes conducting critical trials at customer sites, implementing products on customer equipment, and providing hands‑on guidance. The role also involves training and supporting local technical service teams to optimize process parameters and achieve targeted performance using existing, modified, and newly developed products.

Internally, the R&D – Manager Commercial Applications supports product development and lifecycle management by conducting application testing, validating product and batch performance, addressing quality issues, and benchmarking internal and competitive products. Additionally, the role provides technical training and knowledge transfer across technical, commercial, and cross‑functional teams as needed.

Job duties include contact with other employees and access confidential and proprietary information and/or other items of value, and such access may be supervised or unsupervised. The Company therefore has determined that a review of criminal history is necessary to protect the business and its operations and reputation and is necessary to protect the safety of the Company’s staff, employees, and business relationships.

Work demands may shift based on business priorities, requiring effective prioritization and occasional flexibility in work hours to support urgent or manufacturing‑related needs.

• Responsible for the day‑to‑day management of the applications laboratory, ensuring safe operations and effective execution of projects.
• Responsible for providing testing support and guidance for stage gate product development, product investigations, and internal and external product benchmarking.
• Calculate, coordinate, and communicate required personnel, substrates, application equipment time, and material quantities to support multi‑product benchmarking projects.
• Complete application assessment for stage gate projects for all technologies.
• Complete application work and provide feedback for Raw‑Material replacement, Manufacturing site change, Rework and technology transfer projects.
• Utilizes extensive knowledge of product performance to interpret coating application results to provide feedback to formulation team in developing new products.
• Responsible for development and validation of Industrial Wood (IW) application procedures to align with line audits of customers.
• Responsible for the maintenance of current equipment and capital planning of new equipment.
• Responsible for the management of one or more team members.
• Responsible for maintaining external communication on scheduling to the IW team.
• Responsible for developing and providing application training to internal and external customers both at internal and external sites including trade shows.
• Responsible for development and maintenance of line audit documentation for customers.
• Responsible for scheduling meetings to coordinate materials and substrates to ensure testing and training are executed with minimal variation from defined processes and product specifications.
• Responsible for troubleshooting on external customer lines without technical lab assistance.
• Responsible for gathering information and designing testing parameters to reproduce quality issues and provide feedback to quality…