Director, Product Innovation

Position Overview

The Director, Product Innovation-Ingredient & Translational Science, leads IVC’s early-stage science and product innovation capability, connecting consumer and customer needs with ingredient science, raw material strategy, formulation feasibility, clinical science and claims substantiation, supplier capability, and scalable product development.

This role strengthens R&D as a growth engine by improving scientific and clinical credibility, reducing development rework, accelerating speed-to-market, and building a reusable science-to-product pipeline for VMS, supplement, OTC-adjacent, and functional nutrition products.

The purpose of this role will be to build an IVC-ready early-stage product innovation function that improves how the RD organization selects ingredients, evaluates suppliers, generates clinical support and substantiates claims, designs feasible formulas, and converts scientific opportunities into manufacturable, commercially viable products.

This is a science-to-feasibility-to-commercialization leadership role, not pure research or advisory function. The Director must ensure upstream innovation creates concepts that can be quoted, sourced, substantiated, manufactured, scaled, and delivered.

The role balances three priorities: customer value, operational feasibility, scientific/clinical and regulatory credibility

Hybrid work arrangement: Primarily remote, with an expectation to work in the office approximately five days per month and additional in-office attendance as business needs require.

Specific Responsibilities

Develop and execute an early-stage product innovation strategy aligned to customer needs, category trends, dosage-form opportunities, ingredient technologies, scientific evidence, claims/benefit spaces, and manufacturable product platforms.

• Partner with Sales and Marketing to build a balanced product innovation pipeline across customer-informed and strategic innovation opportunities, platform innovation, cost and margin improvement, ingredient differentiation, clinical evidence and claims expansion, dosage-form/sensory improvement, sustainability, and clean-label innovation.
• Translate consumer and customer white spaces into technically feasible opportunities across tablets, chewables, hard capsules, softgels, powders, gummies, and emerging delivery formats.
• Evaluate concepts early for feasibility, raw material availability, cost, regulatory feasibility, claims support, formulation risk, sensory risk, packaging impact, and scale-up readiness.

Lead ingredient science and support raw material strategy to improve how materials are selected, managed, risk-assessed, substituted, and used in product development.

• Partner with Raw Materials, Sourcing, Supplier Quality, Quality, Regulatory, and Product Development to ensure materials are scientifically sound, supply-ready, manufacturable, compliant, and commercially practical.
• Create governance for new and existing materials covering functionality, alternate supplier readiness, cost/availability, specification alignment, regulatory and claims suitability, stability and interaction risk, sensory impact, processing sensitivity, country/customer restrictions, sustainability profile, and quality/compliance risk.

Develop reusable libraries and decision tools that shift IVC from project-by-project response to platform-based innovation, improving speed, quote confidence, formulation reuse, and technical credibility.

• Cover actives, botanicals, minerals, probiotics, heat/moisture-sensitive ingredients, encapsulation/protection systems, coatings, smart-release technologies, taste masking, sweetener and sugar-free systems, bioavailability technologies, clean-label/sustainability alternatives, cost-optimized excipients, and packaging-sensitive ingredients.
• Maintain these platforms as practical tools for Sales support, ingredient and product platforms, dosage-form decisions, and early feasibility reviews.

Translate ingredient science, nutrition science, clinical evidence, consumer insights, and customer needs into claims-ready, marketable, and manufacturable product concepts.

• Partner with Regulatory Science & Affairs to ensure claims are substantiated, structurally/functionally appropriate,…