Chemist (R&D)
About The Position
ITW Car Care, a division of Illinois Tool Works (ITW), specializes in automotive aftermarket products. The division offers a diverse portfolio of brands such as Rain-X wiper blades, visibility enhancing products, and water repellent treatments, including our 2-in-1 Glass Cleaner and Black Magic for wheel and tire needs. The ideal candidate will bring a blend of technical and formulation expertise in aftermarket car care product development and strategy. Under the technical collaboration and/or direction of R&D Leadership, the candidate will develop multiple projects in a fast-paced innovative environment. They are responsible for research, development, technical evaluation, and testing of formulations. This position requires a creative individual with a passion for technical learning and curiosity. The Senior Lead Chemist will spend approximately 50% of their daily activity working at the lab bench to create new products and solve complex technical problems to support the ITW Global Brand’s business strategies.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, or related discipline
- 3–5 years of hands-on formulation and product development experience, preferably in consumer-packaged goods, automotive care, coatings, or related applied chemistry industries.
- Strong understanding of formulation chemistry, ideally including surfactants, silicones, polymers, solvents, or related functional systems.
- Experience in physical and chemical characterization of surfaces.
- Demonstrated ability to independently design and execute formulation experiments and interpret technical data.
- Experience with product performance testing, stability evaluation, and comparative benchmarking.
- Ability to manage multiple concurrent projects in a dynamic, fast-paced R&D environment.
- Strong problem-solving skills with a structured, data-driven approach to technical decision-making.
- Effective collaborator with experience working in cross-functional, product development teams.
- Strong communication skills with the ability to clearly articulate technical results, insights, and recommendations to diverse stakeholders.
- High attention to detail, strong ownership mindset, and demonstrated ability to deliver consistent experimental execution.
Nice To Haves
- Master’s degree or higher preferred.
- Knowledge of ISO practice/requirements for manufacturing scaleups will be added advantage.
Responsibilities
- Translates customer needs/consumer pain points into effective product designs and customer-driven innovation strategies by partnering with Marketing & Technical Service/Application Engineering.
- Identifies, plans, recommends and completes major technical programs leading to innovative applications or extensions of existing and new technologies that have significant impact on the organization.
- Collaborate with various raw material suppliers/cross functional teams to research, develop and create differentiated products and solutions using surfactants, silicone fluid and its derivatives, polymers, and solvents.
- Lead formula development & manage technical aspects of assigned projects within ITW’s stage-gate process in conjunction with a project manager.
- Clearly identify project goals, product design requirements, technical approach, test strategy, and conduct laboratory evaluations, comparison testing and issue final comprehensive reports.
- Conduct patent searches to monitor competitive innovations and generate intellectual property in own area of development in the form of patents, formulation know-how, and trade secrets.
- Support the scale-up of formulations from lab scale to mid- and full-size manufacturing batches.
- Coordinate and work with internal departments on the technology transfer for scale-up, and commercialization, and determine the appropriate design and product specifications to maximize ease of manufacturing and customer applications.
- Provide short- and long-term support for current products to maintain ITW’s reputation for quality and performance by qualifying alternative sources of raw materials and validating performance.
- Manage multiple projects/tasks independently and as part of a team and fully utilize analytical laboratory equipment.
- Understand, follow and stay abreast of important safety, health, environmental, quality and regulatory requirements affecting this industry.
- Minimal business travel required (< 10%)
- Other duties as assigned.
Benefits
- career development and learning opportunities
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
