Product Formulation Scientist

Mars•Franklin, TN

5d•Onsite

About The Position

There is an exciting opportunity to join the R&D team within the innovation function as the Product Formulation Scientist. The position is responsible for maintaining the competitiveness of the C&T product portfolio of Pet Nutrition North America in terms of nutritional compliance, shelf-life & pet product performance, as well as enabling delivery of CSL in partnership with Supply & Commercial through recipe reformulation, site troubleshooting support, NSQs (New Supplier Qualifications) and addressing business continuity and resilience initiatives. The position also performs critical contributions to the Value leadership & Climate programs of Pet Nutrition North America.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Food Science, Engineering or Chemistry
Experience in a Food Manufacturing environment working in Quality, Food Safety, Engineering or Product/Process development.
4 + years of experience in R&D Product Development and/or Formulation within the pet industry.
Knowledge of product development and formulation from bench top to production & commercialization.
Prior experience must include functionality of raw materials, product design, use of formulation systems, and product maintenance in an operating environment.
Strong ability to work cross functionally with people in other disciplines and/or business areas.

Responsibilities

Formulate & deliver product recipes of current portfolio to the PNNA factory network for the C&T technology to enable manufacturing of products that are safe, legal, and compliant with the corresponding finished product specification (including short-term raw material shortages & controlled recipe changes, in collaboration with Supply & Commercial).
Own Product/Formulation deliverables for prioritized NSQs (New Supplier Qualifications).
Own Product/Formulation deliverables for prioritized business continuity initiatives, including those related to Technical Risk Assessments & Concessions.
Own Product/Formulation deliverables for prioritized resilience initiatives.
Run quarterly recipe optimization program and report on quality and cost.
Lead agreed Value Leadership projects.
Actively participate in Value Leadership (VL) pipeline generation, owning the VL Formulation target and plan.
Lead agreed CAP (Climate Action Plan) projects.
Actively participate in Climate Action Plan pipeline generation, led by Commercial.
Drive verification of finished product nutritional compliance across time through definition & execution of the Sentinels program (including corresponding reformulation).
Drive verification of finished product shelf life as per applicable technical standard.
Collaborate with Process-CB and site-based PPIs to support factory troubleshooting following the site escalation process.
Drive gap closure (including RCA [Root Cause Analysis]) for PPP (Pet Product Performance) outages identified in the annual monitoring program (palatability, digestibility, feces quality) in collaboration with Q&FS, Process-CB and CTI.
As needed, consult Product Formulation to define gap closure strategies when root cause goes beyond existing framework.