Senior Product Technologist (Category Product Technologist)

Foster Clark Products Lt is currently looking to recruit a Senior Product Technologist (Category Product Technologist) to join their team on a full-time basis.

Job Role:
Reporting to the Head of R&D, the Category Product Technologist designs, plans, validates and implements the development of new products, line extensions, and product renovations within a number of assigned product categories that are in compliance with established safety standards, good manufacturing practices (GMPs) and will follow and uphold all Food Safety and Food Quality policies as pertains to the role. The Category Product Technologist also acts as a link to pilot plant & factory support and follows the scale-up of products and supports operations with new product launches and assists in troubleshooting. The Product Technologist sets specifications for raw materials and products.

Key Accountabilities
Product Innovation and Development:

• Support the establishment of consumer and category benchmarking with a particular focus on existing competitors, market solutions and sensory product profiling
• Support the development of the innovation pipeline within your assigned categories by participating in exploratory activities to surface new product ideas with moderate input from the supervisor
• Analyze consumer/regional analysis and extrapolate into a targeted product brief
• Develop new products within the assigned categories, executing and analyzing an experimental approach for product design, effectively troubleshooting as necessary and offering plausible, executable solutions
• Develop information for product/ingredient specifications, in-process control points and testing requirements
• Develop robust product specifications (from a nutritional and ingredient standpoint) to ensure sustainable and flexible formulas that will meet consumer, quality and process needs.

• Management of several medium-complexity projects with little supervision within the assigned categories
• Provide technical input through the planning and decision-making process and effectively communicate with senior R&D management
• Plan and lead product development projects and collaborate effectively with a cross-functional, multidisciplinary team to achieve the project scope on time and within budget while meeting quality parameters
• Deliver a flawless handover to Operations, document findings and all relevant reports according to standard and capture lessons learned and best practices.

• Responsible for adhering to the company stability program by ensuring timely initiation of stability studies, execution and reporting as directed by the category responsible as part of recipe development & improvement or packaging changes
• Perform trials/experiments in kitchen/lab/pilot and factory scale to achieve all briefed objectives on time
• Support the category during product industrialization by acquiring basic process understanding and ensuring proper knowledge transfer from R&D to operations.

• Responsible for approving Quality Control Samples
• Effectively ensuring constant upkeep of competition analysis with basic sensorial and consumer understanding to support product development
• Support the various matching programs
• Participate effectively in investigations and problem-solving initiatives
• Perform product analysis and set up new methods when required.

Ideal Candidate Profile
Education:

• Master’s degree in food technology/ Food Engineering with more 5 years of experience in product development
• A PhD in a relevant area will be preferred
• 5 years of experience in Food Product Development in the factory/kitchen/lab environment.

Technical Skills:

• Knowledge of food technology
• Strong knowledge and competencies in flavour chemistry (e.g. flavour generation, flavour stability, sensory relevance), and link to raw materials and food processing
• Good level of ingredient knowledge & their impact on the process and final product
• Good knowledge of processes and technologies involved in food manufacturing
• Ability to analyse and understand consumer/regional analysis
• Good Sensorial skills and ability to draw conclusions
• Industry safety standards and Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs).

Competencies:

• Creativity and Innovation
• Analytical thinking and problem-solving
• Attention to detail
• Drive for results
• Quality Orientation
• Teamwork
• Verbal and written communication
• Environmental scanning
• Program and Project Management
• Planning and organizing
• Monitoring and measuring.