R&D Principal Scientist

Overview

Job Title:

R&D Principal Scientist

Employer:

Frito-Lay, Inc.

Location:

7701 Legacy Drive, Plano, Texas 75024

Duties:
Lead seasoning & flavor development for new product innovation for Doritos & Fritos (Billion-dollar brands). Interpret market, industry and consumer insights and translating information to build flavor strategy accordingly. Develop process and toolbox to build flavor strategy supporting future innovation pipeline for portfolio growth. Train other employees on flavor strategy processes and tools. Design product qualification protocols to validate technical solutions and product design against desired consumer outcomes.

Own and drive product specification definition to make sure raw materials and product designs can be made safe, legal, fit for purpose. Scale-up product design from bench-scale to full scale delivering consumer liking experiences including traveling to manufacturing plants to scale-up technology solutions and products. Apply deep expertise in seasoning processability modeling, a proprietary tool critical for ensuring production readiness and reducing risk.

Represent research & development in cross-functional task forces to enable critical activities to drive a product from idea to launch in market. Seek, evaluate, and test new flavor technologies to enable incremental growth for innovation pipeline with winning consumer experiences. Ability to form technical hypothesis and design technical experiments to demonstrate and validate new technologies. Build close working relationships with key suppliers to identify and land new flavor technologies and solutions for innovation and renovation pipeline.

Drive portfolio transformation initiatives leveraging deep knowledge in seasoning & flavor science and consumer behaviors to achieve sodium reduction, artificial removal with winning experiences. Lead training and development for new hires and developers in R&D on flavors & seasonings development.

Position requires a Bachelor's degree (US or Foreign Equivalent) in Food Science or Food Engineering and nine (9) years of experience in foods product development, Flavor & seasoning development OR Master's degree (US or Foreign Equivalent) in Food Science or Food Engineering and seven (7) years of experience in foods product development, Flavor & seasoning development. Must have nine (9) years’ experience (or 7 with master’s) with:
Deep seed-to-shelf product development experience with strong consumer understanding;
Raw material specification, foods finished product specification, food safety, regulatory requirement for product launches;
Form technical hypothesis and design technical experiments to demonstrate and validate efficacy of new flavor/seasoning technologies; and Knowledge in consumer centric design, leveraging insights to build successful innovation pipeline strategy. Must have four (4) years’ experience with:
Flavors & seasoning formulation technical knowledge for winning formula;
Flavor & seasoning industry and supplier capability knowledge; and Seasoning manufacturing and scale-up knowledge to functionality.

Domestic travel required 10% of the time.

Salary: $119, / year

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, protected veteran status, or disability status. Pepsi Co is an equal opportunity employer. Minorities/Females/Disability/Protected Veteran.