R&D Food Scientist

Willamette Valley Pie Company is looking for a Product Developer / Food Scientist based in Silverton, Oregon. This is a senior individual contributor role, reporting to the President of the Pie Business Unit,owns new product development end-to-end — concept, benchtop, pilot, scale-up, first commercial run, and the spec production runs against afterward. You will formulate for our branded line and for In-Store Bakery private label customers, and you will commercialize both at WVPC and at Dessert Holdings sister facilities, including Kenny’s Great Pies in Smyrna, Georgia.

We are not looking for a lab-bound formulator who hands a spec over the wall and waits for the plant to figure it out. We want someone who can laminate a test crust by hand on Monday, and on Thursday be standing at a depositor in Smyrna at 5 a.m. with a thermometer and a plant supervisor, working out why a filling that set beautifully in a six-quart batch is weeping at two thousand pies an hour — and have it fixed before the shift ends.

This is a blend of food science and pastry craft. If you have chef hands and a scientist’s head, this is your role.

Base Salary Range: $80,000.00 - $90,000.00 per year, plus performance bonuses. Benefits include 401(k), 401(k) matching, health insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance, and paid time off.

Schedule: On-site daily in Silverton, OR. Travel up to 25%, primarily multi-day trips to Kenny’s Great Pies in Smyrna, GA and other Dessert Holdings facilities. Expect early starts and occasional nights and weekends around plant trials and first production runs.

• Own development end-to-end. Translate marketing and customer briefs into concepts, benchtop prototypes, pilot batches, plant trials, and commercial launches.
• Commercialize at the plant, not the bench. Lead scale-up trials at WVPC and Dessert Holdings facilities. Be physically present for first commercial runs and adjust formula, process, or both until the line makes what the bench promised.
• Formulate private label for In-Store Bakery. Partner with Sales to match, beat, and customize products on the customer’s spec, price point, and equipment.
• Own the bill of materials and the cost. Build and cost every formula with Finance before it is presented to a customer. Hit target margin or bring the exception forward with a reformulation option attached.
• Qualify ingredients and suppliers. Work with Purchasing and Quality to evaluate new ingredients and vendors, and build second sources on anything single-sourced and critical.
• Own shelf life and food safety validation. Water activity, pH, freeze-thaw, thaw-and-serve performance, and microbial shelf life, with QA and outside labs. No SKU ships without validated data behind its code date.
• Own labeling accuracy. Nutritional analysis, ingredient statements, allergen declarations, and packaging proof verification.
• Define the Gold Standard with QA. Written specs, reference photos, tolerances, and validated prep and bake instructions across the equipment our customers actually use — so a Silverton pie and a Smyrna pie are the same pie.
• Be technical support for Production and Quality. When a run goes sideways at 6 a.m., you are the call. Diagnose the variable, fix it, and document it so it does not happen twice.
• Escalate any food safety, allergen, or labeling risk immediately. You have the authority to stop a trial, a launch, or a line. We will back you every time you make the right call.

• Degree in Food Science, or Food Technology. A professional pastry credential paired with demonstrable commercial formulation experience will be considered in lieu of the degree.
• 5+ years in product development, R&D, or culinary development within commercial food manufacturing. Bakery, pastry, or frozen dessert experience strongly preferred.
• A documented scale-up track record. You can walk us through one product you took from bench to commercial line, including what went wrong and how you fixed it.
• Working knowledge of bakery and dessert systems: doughs, laminated and crumb crusts, fruit fillings, custards and cream systems, emulsions, stabilizer and hydrocolloid selection, and freeze-thaw…