Scientist, R&D - Product Dev

Scientist, Away From Home and KHI Product Development 

Role Summary: 

The Scientist, Away From Home and KHI supports product development across medium-complexity projects for the Away From Home / KHI business, contributing to a broad portfolio of innovation, renovation, and brand maintenance initiatives. This role helps translate business needs into practical development plans, supports technical execution, and helps projects progress effectively from formulation through scale-up and commercialization. 

This role operates in a dynamic, cross-functional environment and requires strong technical judgment, project management, and problem-solving skills across a range of product categories and business needs. Success in the role requires the ability to manage multiple priorities, collaborate effectively across functions, and maintain strong execution and documentation discipline. 

Key Responsibilities: 

• Support product development across multiple cross-functional projects and product categories within the Away From Home / KHI business, including innovation, renovation, and brand maintenance work 
• Drive product development workstreams from formulation through scale-up and start-up with appropriate guidance and cross-functional partnership 
• Work from ideation to commercialization, from benchtop samples to final production and from raw material to finished product specification.  
• Partner with cross-functional teams to advance projects, resolve technical issues, and deliver against business timelines 
• Serve as an R&D point person for manufacturing plants and support plant operations with troubleshooting, process design, and product quality-related issues to maintain business continuity 
• Lead product testing, qualification, and commercialization activities across laboratory, pilot plant, and production environments 
• Apply technical judgment to product, ingredient, process, and formulation challenges and develop recommendations and contingency plans based on findings 
• Communicate technical findings, recommendations, risks, and implications clearly and in a timely manner to cross-functional stakeholders 
• Manage technical timelines, proactively raise issues and risks, and adjust plans as needed 
• Manage multiple priorities concurrently and identify tradeoffs, resource constraints, and priority conflicts across initiatives, including planned and unplanned brand maintenance work 
• Interface with technical experts, category scientists, and cross-functional partners to understand technologies, applications, and business needs 
• Assist in scoping early-stage innovation ideas and participate in ideation sessions 
• Conduct lab, pilot plant, and manufacturing trials to optimize formulations and processing systems 
• Write specifications and maintain high-quality documentation that supports consistent, high-quality products 
• Demonstrate flexibility and willingness to learn new categories, technologies, and processing areas in support of business needs 

Qualifications: 

• BS in Food Science, Food Engineering, Dairy Science, Meat Science, Chemical Engineering, Biological Engineering, or related field and 2 years of relevant experience or MS plus minimum of 1 year of relevant experience, or PhD and no relevant experience required 

• Product development and commercialization experience 

• Understanding of ingredient functionality and interrelationship of ingredients and process 

• Excellent communication, influencing, prioritization, and project management skills 

• Strong critical thinking skills and ability to make connections to the big picture 

• Ability to lead, coach, and motivate others 

• Manage multiple assignments/tasks concurrently with the ability to question the priority of work 

• Willingness to travel approximately 30% of the time 

Work Environment & Schedule 

This position is considered a normal office environment with 30% travel or visits to external locations; offices are open workspaces. Additionally, this role requires in-office presence at least three days per week in compliance with the hybrid work schedule. 

Physical Requirements 

Physical demands include, but are not limited to: 

· Lift up to 30 lbs and navigate lab, storage, pilot plant, and manufacturing environments.