Senior Principal Scientist - Spectroscopy

Colgate • Piscataway, NJ

7d • Onsite

About The Position

Colgate-Palmolive Company is a global consumer products company operating in over 200 countries specializing in Oral Care, Personal Care, Home Care, Skin Care, and Pet Nutrition. Our products are trusted in more households than any other brand in the world, making us a household name! Join Colgate-Palmolive, a caring, innovative growth company reimagining a healthier future for people, their pets, and our planet. Guided by our core values—Caring, Inclusive, and Courageous—we foster a culture that inspires our people to achieve common goals. Together, let's build a brighter, healthier future for all. As a Principal Scientist you will serve as a central technical resource supporting the entire global Colgate-Palmolive portfolio by developing and validating state-of-the-art analytical platforms to characterize complex product matrices. Operating within the global R&D organization, you will act as the technical arbiter of "Truth," ensuring that every chemical claim made by Marketing is backed by statistically rigorous, peer-reviewed-quality data. This role offers an exciting opportunity to spearhead Lab 4.0 digital transformations, run advanced competitive teardowns, and defend the company's intellectual property. Your primary objective will be to provide flawless analytical characterization that guarantees formulation parity, regulatory compliance, and consumer safety across all product categories.

Requirements

• PhD in Analytical, Organic, or Medicinal Chemistry
• 10 years of advanced laboratory experience.
• Expert-level knowledge of High-Resolution LC-MS and GC-MS for content quantification and structure elucidation.
• Technical proficiency in spectroscopic techniques including FTIR, Raman, and NMR as supporting tools for understanding molecular interactions within a formula.
• Proven experience working within a GxP (GLP/GMP) regulated environment with a strong understanding of data "Chain of Custody" protocols.

Nice To Haves

• Specialized experience in Microbiome Analytics, including metabolomics or analyzing bacterial metabolites in complex biological samples.
• Demonstrated background in "Green Chemistry" analytics, such as assessing the biodegradability of surfactants or the purity of post-consumer recycled packaging.
• Strong collaborative capacity to translate complex analytical big data into actionable business strategies for cross-functional stakeholders.
• Proven ability to support IP activities and patent filings by providing detailed molecular characterization data for new entities.

Responsibilities

• Designs and validates novel analytical protocols for active and critical inactive ingredients, stabilizers, and sensory molecules using high-resolution LC/GC MS and NMR technologies.
• Leads proactive monitoring and "Rapid Response" forensics for trace contaminants, conducting root-cause analysis on stability failures or manufacturing deviations to ensure safety amid supply chain shifts.
• Conducts competitive product teardowns to break down rival formulations to their base molecules, utilizing non-targeted analysis (NTA) workflows to structurally identify unknown components, and evaluates optimized ingredients from new suppliers to ensure absolute formulation parity.
• Partners with Marketing and Legal teams to transform analytical results into "Visual Science" for claim validation, ensuring all methods meet AOAC, USP, or ISO standards to remain legally unassailable.
• Evaluates high-throughput tools, oversees the implementation of MS Imaging platforms, and collaborates with Digital R&D to build automated data processing pipelines, feeding mass spec chemometric and big data into predictive Machine Learning models.
• Develops standardized methodologies including ultra-trace extractables and leachables (E&L) screening to investigate chemical interactions between formulas and new sustainable or recycled packaging materials to ensure zero migration of impurities.

Benefits

• medical
• dental
• vision
• basic life insurance
• paid parental leave
• disability coverage
• participation in the 401(k) retirement plan with company matching contributions subject to eligibility requirements
• a minimum of 15 vacation/PTO days
• 13 paid holidays
• Paid sick leave is adjusted based on role and location in accordance with local laws.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal
• Education Level: Ph.D. or professional degree