R&D Sr Formulator - Nutritional Bars

R&D Sr Formulator – Nutritional Bars Santa Fe Springs, California

Job

This is a senior-level, onsite R&D role based near the Santa Fe Springs area that will serve as the organization's lead formulation expert, with a primary focus on nutritional bars. The position is responsible for driving product development from concept through commercialization, leading complex formulation projects, supporting innovation initiatives, and serving as a key technical resource across cross-functional teams and customer-facing activities.

Some of the primary requirements and highlights discussed include:

• 8+ years of formulation experience within dietary supplements, nutraceuticals, functional foods, OTC products, or related manufacturing environments.
• Significant experience developing and commercializing nutritional bars, particularly utilizing extrusion manufacturing processes.
• Expertise in formulation science, stability studies, scale-up activities, technical transfers, ingredient functionality, and shelf-life validation.
• Strong understanding of food safety and regulatory requirements, including cGMP, HACCP, SQF, and 21 CFR Parts 101 and 111.
• Experience managing multiple projects simultaneously while driving innovation, cost optimization, and continuous improvement efforts.
• Ability to provide technical leadership, mentor junior formulators, and collaborate effectively with Operations, QA, Regulatory, Procurement, Sales, and customers.
• Proficiency with data analysis, documentation systems, ERP/MRP platforms, and AI-enabled tools to support R&D efficiency and decision-making.

The R&D Senior Formulator is the company’s highest individual-contributor formulation authority, responsible for architecting and delivering innovation across the full product development lifecycle - from early-stage concept through commercial launch and lifecycle management. This role owns the most technically complex and strategically significant formulation programs, drives platform-level innovation, and serves as the principal scientific resource for cross-functional leadership, key customers, and external partners.

The Senior Formulator mentors and elevates the entire R&D team, champions data-driven decision-making and AI-enabled workflows, and shapes the technical direction of the company’s product portfolio. Mastery of formulation science, regulatory compliance, process engineering, and customer-facing technical leadership are all defining expectations of this role. Focus emphasis and development to elevate the company’s nutrition bar business to new levels.
This is an onsite/in-office position.

• Serve as the primary technical authority for company’s most complex, high-value, and strategically critical formulation programs across all product platforms - nutritional bars (primary focus), soft chews, dragées, and/or pan-coated forms, from concept through commercial scale.
• Architect and own comprehensive formulation strategies leveraging expert-level command of water activity control, pH and buffering chemistry, rheology, emulsification, hygroscopicity management, coating science, and multi-component ingredient interaction to deliver products that are stable, consumer-acceptable, and commercially robust at scale.
• Design and govern company-wide stability programs: author accelerated and real-time study protocols, develop Arrhenius-based degradation kinetics models and overage strategies, and issue authoritative validation reports with label claim risk assessments for senior leadership and customer stakeholders.

• Lead raw material evaluation and substitution strategy at a platform level; anticipate and resolve formulation risks upstream in the development cycle and publish technical guidance documents for use by the broader R&D team.
• Own end-to-end pilot and commercial scale-up execution for flagship programs; author complete technical transfer packages, lead manufacturing…