Senior Product Development Leader

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Full Time Professional FDC, Saint Louis, MO, US

Location:

St. Louis, MO

Department: DESIGN, Supply Chain Engineering, Commercialization

Reports to:

Director, Supply Chain Engineer

Deli Star is a next-generation food manufacturing company with a clear purpose:
to nourish life through protein with integrity
. We specialize in fresh, sous vide cooked proteins and patented food-safety technologies, serving some of the most trusted brands, and culinary teams across the United States. Our mission is ambitious:
to build a world-class fresh sous vide system
. We are working towards a future in which safe, nutritious, high-quality protein is fresh and accessible to more people.

We are proud of our strong customer partnerships, our rapid growth and our long-term commitment to building an innovative, technology-enabled manufacturing platform.

Our people-first culture is grounded in three core values:
Trust, Resilience, and Creativity
.

We believe the future belongs to companies that can combine quality, innovation and operational excellence at scale.

Help bring the future of fresh food into commercial production. Deli Star is building a world-class Fresh Sous Vide system to make safe, nutritious, high-quality protein fresh and accessible. Our Fresh Sous Vide process creates opportunities across proteins, entrées, sauces, sides, and complete prepared meals. We are looking for a technical leader who can turn promising product designs into repeatable manufacturing results.

You will combine deep meat and protein processing expertise, experimental rigor, and hands-on plant leadership to guide development trials and initial manufacturing scale-up. Working with Product & Process Design, Manufacturing, Food Safety & Quality, and the broader DESIGN team, you will test process assumptions, diagnose performance, define critical requirements, and establish evidence that products can be made consistently at commercial scale.

This is a hands-on role with meaningful influence. Your work will help bring new Fresh Sous Vide applications, REVEL products, and customer programs into reliable production across business-to-business, retail, and direct-to-consumer channels.

DESIGN connects food science and product design with technical expertise, Supply Chain, including Commercialization, Purchasing and Logistics, and Technology systems.

The Senior Product Development Leader focuses on commercializing the design, translating product and process intent into repeatable manufacturing through disciplined trials, technical scale-up, and effective handoff to Manufacturing. The adjacent Senior Product Designer role owns formulation, bench design, and technical intent.

• Lead development trials and initial plant-scale production trials for core product improvements and strategic innovation programs.
• Translate approved product and process designs into scalable manufacturing methods for proteins and prepared foods.
• Apply deep expertise in meat science, protein functionality, ingredient interactions, thermal processing, equipment, yield, and finished-product performance.
• Design and lead disciplined trials with clear objectives, variables, controls, success criteria, sampling plans, and data requirements.
• Provide hands-on technical leadership during trials, diagnose unexpected results, and use structured experimentation to resolve scale-up risks.
• Document results and recommend go, hold, revise, or repeat based on evidence, following established development approvals and Food Safety & Quality requirements.
• Partner with Product & Process Design when scale-up evidence indicates the formulation or original technical intent needs reconsideration.
• Define technical material requirements, specifications, quantities, timing needs, and qualification criteria; collaborate with Purchasing on readiness and evaluation of alternatives.
• Engage Manufacturing early to assess equipment capability, process fit, manufacturability, production constraints, and expected performance.
• Define and document critical product and process parameters, technical findings, operating requirements, and unresolved risks.
• Understand cost-of-goods-sold (COGS) drivers and provide technical inputs on formulation, material use, yield, waste, and processing performance; identify practical improvement…