Principal Engineer, R&D - Flexible Film Packaging

The Kraft Heinz Company•Glenview, IL

3d•Hybrid

About The Position

As a Flexible Film Packaging Engineer, you will contribute technical expertise to help develop and advance flexible packaging material and format solutions for the North American portfolio. The objective of the role is to support development and validation of functional, cost-competitive flexible packaging solutions that meet sustainability requirements, while enabling innovation, compliance, and value engineering initiatives. You will collaborate with Innovation, Process, and Platform packaging teams and cross-functional stakeholders to translate technical and sustainability requirements into commercially manufacturable solutions under the guidance of technical leadership.

Requirements

BS/MS/PhD degree in Engineering, Materials, Chemical or Packaging Engineering preferred, or related discipline.
Minimum of 6 years of R&D packaging technology development, commercialization experience, with exposure to flexible film packaging and project leadership experience (consumer goods, food & beverage, pharma or similar preferred).
Experience working at converter or upstream film or technology provider ideal.
Working technical knowledge of materials (films, paper, barriers, coatings, sealants and additives, etc.) and manufacturing constraints, including converting processes (e.g., extrusion lamination, adhesive lamination, sealing, pouch forming, form-fill-seal, etc).
Demonstrated ability to support end-to-end development activities, including planning/performing experiments, documenting results, and coordinating with cross-functional partners.
Demonstrated capability of design of experiments and statistics and technical problem solving.
Excellent communication and interpersonal skills; ability to influence across functions and levels.
Working knowledge of project execution disciplines (e.g., task planning, risk identification, stakeholder updates) and comfort operating within PMO expectations/templates.
Exposure to sustainable packaging solutions, material/package industry standards and regulations.
Ability to support pilot line activities and scale-up to industrial production as required.
Willingness and ability to travel up to 25% of the time.

Responsibilities

Support execution of flexible packaging technical initiatives by completing assigned research, development, and validation workstreams that balance technology exploration with proof of concept needs.
Contribute to technical assessments and business case inputs for packaging technologies/applications by gathering data, summarizing learnings, and documenting technical risks and opportunities.
Support external collaboration activities across the value chain (e.g., resin, barrier material suppliers; universities; institutes; start-ups; open innovation networks; scouting partners, industry partnerships) by coordinating samples/trials, tracking actions, and documenting outcomes.
Apply enterprise standards and manufacturability considerations by following established guidance to ensure design decisions align with enterprise standards, manufacturability needs, sustainability needs, and platform direction.
Provide technical problem solving on flexible packaging projects by using structured troubleshooting, data analysis, and experimentation to resolve technical hurdles.
Apply Design of Experiments (DoE), statistics, and technical problem-solving practices to research, development, and validation work.
Support prototyping development for consumer testing and assist with pilot line setup and scale-up to industrial production as required to enable commercialization.
Contribute to knowledge sharing and capability building by documenting learnings, creating technical summaries, and supporting training content or informal coaching as needed.