Director of Product Development & R&D

Summary:

The Director of Product Development & R&D provides strategic and operational leadership for the company’s product development and research functions. This senior-level position is responsible for leading the R&D Manager, Senior Flavorists, Flavorists, Scientists, and other technical development personnel while establishing the priorities, processes, and standards that guide new product development.

The Director serves as the senior technical leader connecting Development, R&D, Operations, Quality, Regulatory, and Sales. The position is responsible for ensuring customer and internal development projects move efficiently from concept and formulation through validation, scale-up, commercialization, and ongoing technical support.

This role requires both strong technical knowledge and strong organizational leadership. The Director is expected to develop the technical team, improve development processes, establish accountability, manage competing priorities, and ensure development resources are aligned with the company’s strategic and commercial objectives.

Essential

Job Responsibilities:

Product Development
• Oversee the development of new flavors, formulations, applications, and related products from initial request through commercialization.
• Establish development priorities based on customer requirements, business opportunity, technical complexity, available resources, and strategic importance.
• Ensure development projects have clearly defined objectives, responsibilities, timelines, and deliverables.
• Establish standards for formulation development, testing, documentation, sample preparation, and technical review.
• Review and provide technical direction on complex or high-priority development projects.
• Ensure successful transition of formulations from laboratory development to full-scale manufacturing.
• Partner with Operations to address scale-up challenges, manufacturing feasibility, raw material considerations, process requirements, and production efficiency.
• Ensure projects are formally transferred to Operations, Quality, Regulatory, and other appropriate departments before commercialization.

Research & Innovation
• Establish and lead the company’s longer-term R&D and innovation strategy.
• Identify emerging ingredients, technologies, processes, and market trends that could create new product or business opportunities.
• Balance immediate customer-driven development projects with longer-term research and innovation initiatives.
• Develop internal technical capabilities and proprietary knowledge that strengthen the company’s competitive position.
• Evaluate new raw materials, technologies, suppliers, and development methodologies.

Organizational Collaboration
• Serve as the primary technical and development liaison between Sales, Operations, Quality, Regulatory, Purchasing, and executive leadership.
• Partner with Sales to evaluate customer opportunities and determine technical feasibility, development requirements, and realistic project timelines.
• Ensure commercial commitments are aligned with technical capability, development capacity, regulatory requirements, and manufacturing feasibility.
• Work closely with Operations to ensure products developed in the laboratory can be manufactured safely, consistently, efficiently, and at the required scale.
• Partner with Quality and Regulatory to ensure formulations meet applicable food safety, labeling, regulatory, and customer requirements.

Technical Standards & Documentation
• Ensure formulas, processing instructions, specifications, and technical documentation are complete before commercial production.
• Ensure appropriate change-control procedures are followed when formulas, ingredients, suppliers, or manufacturing processes are modified.

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