Principal Scientist - Hair Care & Styling

Ashland Specialty Ingredients GP • Bridgewater Township, NJ

105d

About The Position

Ashland has an exciting opportunity for a Principal Scientist, Hair Care & Styling to join our Personal Care business at our Bridgewater, NJ site. This is a very visible, significant role within the global Personal care R&D organization as the incumbent will be accountable to work in the lab to develop technical approaches to support Ashland technologies in hair care & styling and showcase their unique value proposition in the market. This position will report to the Technical Service Manager Personal Care NA and will be based at our Bridgewater, NJ site.

Requirements

• Master's Degree in Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Materials Science & Engineering, or Biochemistry.
• 10+ years of formulation experience, applications testing, and product development in hair care including rinse-off (shampoo, conditioner), styling, scalp care, or hairsprays.
• 5+ years' experience in personal care technical service and customer facing, providing solutions to customers.
• Ability to lead projects, acquire, analyze, interpret and organize data.
• Writing and documenting experiments, formulations development, and protocol are required.
• Excellent communication, presentation, and collaboration skills with a demonstrated ability to present to customers, influence cross-functional R&D, application teams, and senior management.
• Ability to work well individually and in a collaborative team environment.
• Ability to travel up to 40% as needed to visit customers and support sales.

Responsibilities

• Lead the execution of customer project opportunities in the region in hair care.
• Design and develop differentiated hair care formulation prototypes that showcase the unique value proposition benefits of our hair care ingredients and coordinate with the sales team to present them to the customers.
• Accountable for the execution of multiple customer projects concurrently to drive business growth.
• Travel to visit customers to support sales, showcase the unique value proposition benefits of our hair care technologies.
• Provide technical support and troubleshooting to customers, resolve formulation issues, and recommend innovative solutions.
• Respond to customer technical questions including formulations need and specific claims substantiation, and regulatory.
• Lead the formulations ideation and development of hair care & styling products for the region, and conduct in-vitro testing, consumer salon testing, and data analysis to support claims that validate the value proposition of the products to the consumers.
• Work with Global Hair Care Innovation teams to understand the new hair care technologies coming from Global R&D pipelines and develop testing evaluation to adapt and engage regional customers with beta sampling and follow-up.
• Partner with the regional marketing manager to develop new prototype concepts and stories that demonstrate the performance of our New Product Introductions (NPI) or legacy portfolio to engage our customers and help drive sales growth.
• Identify new opportunities based on Ashland's personal care ingredients, and coordinate with R&D and marketing to develop prototype formulations plan.
• Explore new technology frontiers by identifying industry trends and white spaces within the Hair Care market.
• Design and deliver technical presentations, and prototypes to support marketing campaigns and customer outreach.
• Responsible for training new team members, sales, distributors on our hair portfolio and prototype formulations.
• Mentor and coach junior scientists and technicians, building technical capability across the team.

Benefits

• Industry competitive salary and benefits
• Pay-for-performance incentive plans
• Diverse work environment where employees feel challenged and valued
• Opportunities for development and advancement throughout our global organization

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Industry: Merchant Wholesalers, Nondurable Goods
• Education Level: Master's degree