Senior Scientist

Position Title: Senior Scientist

Position Type: Regular - Full-Time

Grade: Grade 05

Requisition : 40817

In every role, McCainers are ambitious, curious, and passionate about creating exceptional work experiences - together. With a customer-first mindset, we make doing business with McCain easy.

As a Sr. Product Development Scientist in NA Potato Innovation, you will play a key role in developing, optimizing, and scaling innovative products and platforms across McCain’s NA and Canadian Potato categories. You will lead and deliver complex product development projects, applying strong scientific and technical expertise while partnering closely with global and regional stakeholders. This role requires solid experience in ingredient functionality, formulation, processing, and commercialization.

You will contribute to shaping innovation pipelines by translating consumer, customer, and technical insights into feasible and viable product solutions. As a senior individual contributor, you will serve as a trusted technical partner, support capability building within R&D, and represent the voice of Product Development in cross-functional forums.

• Front-End Innovation & Platform Development
• Contribute to the identification and development of innovation opportunities grounded in consumer, culinary, and technology insights, in partnership with Sensory UX, Insights, Commercial, and Marketing.
• Support the development and evolution of product platforms that can scale across regions and customers.
• Translate insights and concepts into technically sound product designs with clear development and feasibility pathways.
• Demonstrate a working understanding of market trends, emerging technologies, and the competitive landscape to inform product and project decisions.
• Where appropriate partner with Global Innovation Platform team to align and translate global innovation opportunities into regional pipeline initiatives.
• Technical & Scientific Leadership
• Lead technical execution of product development projects from formulation through commercialization.
• Apply strong knowledge of ingredient functionality, formulation principles, and processing to solve development challenges.
• Design and execute development and validation work, including DOE, pilot trials, scale-up activities, and commercialization readiness.
• Partner with internal teams (ATI, Engineering, Quality, Procurement) and external suppliers to deliver products that meet key performance, cost, and quality targets.
• Serve as a technical contributor or subject matter expert in assigned technology or product areas.
• Maintain high standards of project documentation, including technical plans, risk assessments, trial summaries, and feasibility reviews.
• Stay current with advancements in food science and ingredient technology through journals, supplier engagement, and professional networks.
• Project & Portfolio Execution
• Serve as the Product Development technical lead on innovation projects, representing R&D and other Technical functions across cross-functional teams.
• Own technical deliverables, timelines, and risk mitigation plans within assigned projects.
• Proactively identify technical risks and work with the team to develop practical mitigation strategies.
• Ensure alignment between technical execution, project objectives, and business priorities.
• Collaboration, Influence & Capability Building
• Communicate technical findings and recommendations clearly to cross-functional and regional stakeholders.
• Support and mentor junior scientists and team members through knowledge sharing and on-the-job coaching.
• Collaborate with Culinary and customers to co-create and adapt recipes to meet menu needs and “back-of-house” requirements.
• Lead raw material sourcing, evaluation, improvement, and approval activities in partnership with Procurement.
• Support Commercial and Marketing with technical input for customer presentations and innovation discussions.
• Provide technical support to Manufacturing, Q&FS, Engineering, and Technical Operations to resolve product or process issues.
• Share learnings on trends, ingredients, and new product introductions with the broader Product Development…