Vice President, R&D

HomeTown Food Company • Chicago, IL

7h • Onsite

About The Position

The Vice President of Research & Development will serve as a strategic growth partner, leading the enterprise-wide R&D organization for a $1.6 billion consumer packaged goods (CPG) company. Based at our corporate headquarters in Chicago, IL, this executive will drive the entire innovation, product formulation, and technical commercialization agenda across all four of our major manufacturing assets and a co-manufacturing network. While maintaining technical excellence and category leadership in our established frozen breakfast and dry baking mix categories, the primary strategic mandate for this role is to develop, build, and scale an entirely new pipeline of retort-processed products. This executive will act as the principal architect for our expansion into complex, high-quality canned pasta meals. The ideal candidate will blend visionary innovation management with deep, specialized mastery of low-acid canned food (LACF) development, leveraging this background to build close synergies between R&D, brand marketing, and field operations. The Mission: Retort Innovation & Pipeline Expansion: This leader will directly bridge scientific capabilities with commercial strategy. You will transform our canned portfolio by establishing a world-class innovation pipeline, solving complex thermal processing challenges, and successfully commercializing next-generation shelf-stable meals across our internal plant network and external partners.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Food Science, Food Engineering, Chemical Engineering, or a highly related technical discipline is required.
• Minimum of 12–15 years of progressive R&D leadership experience in food manufacturing, with a substantial track record of operating in large-scale CPG environments ($500M+).
• Proven track record of successfully innovating, developing, and launching low-acid canned food pipelines using advanced retort technologies.
• Deep knowledge of thermal processing principles (calculations, heat transfer mechanics) is non-negotiable.
• Technical familiarity across diverse plant operations—specifically involving frozen dough/par-baked items and industrial dry blending—is highly valued.
• Ability and willingness to travel regularly to plant operations in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, and various co-manufacturer locations to lead critical trials and scale-ups.
• An R&D leader who views innovation through a commercial lens—highly attuned to product margins, market viability, operational throughput, and capital expenditure ROI.
• A dynamic communicator capable of aligning plant operations managers, third-party co-manufacturers, and executive commercial teams behind an aggressive innovation roadmap.

Nice To Haves

• An advanced degree (MS or Ph.D.) is strongly preferred.

Responsibilities

• Partner directly with the Commercial team to bridge the gap between consumer insights, culinary ideation, and technical food science execution to ensure maximum market impact.
• Lead, mentor, and structurally unify the entire decentralized R&D organization across all four primary manufacturing assets and the corporate culinary and science labs.
• Oversee a disciplined innovation process to accelerate speed-to-market while strictly maintaining margin and cost-of-goods-sold (COGS) requirements.
• Own the technical blueprint for the design, formulation, testing, and scaling of a brand-new pipeline of shelf-stable, retort-processed products (specifically canned pasta entries).
• Solve highly complex food science challenges specific to retort processing, including starch stability, structural integrity of pasta under extreme thermal stress, and sophisticated sauce emulsification.
• Establish operational best-practices for filling weights, headspace management, container seal integrity, and precise heat-penetration profiles.
• Serve as the primary technical point of contact with external Process Authorities to establish and validate new scheduled thermal processes.
• Direct technical transfer, trial coordination, and full-scale commercialization protocols across our internal network, requiring regular travel to manufacturing facilities in Toledo, OH; Milton, PA; and Little Rock, AR.
• Evaluate, qualify, and manage the technical R&D relationships with external co-manufacturers to seamlessly extend corporate production capabilities and handle flexible capacity requirements.
• Drive product optimization, alternative ingredient sourcing, and technical cost-reduction (margin enhancement) initiatives across all categories without compromising taste or quality profile.
• Ensure unconditional regulatory compliance across the product catalog with FDA, USDA, and global food safety initiatives (SQF/BRC).
• Implement bulletproof technical documentation protocols for formulations, product specs, operational processing logs, and shelf-life studies.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Executive