Food Product Developer in Huntingdon

We are looking for an ambitious and passionate Food Product Developer to develop new and modify existing products in line with written briefs, customer expectations and financial targets to create products of sustainable and repeatable quality and sustainable cost.

As a Food Product Developer, some of the responsibilities will be to:

• Responsible for product development and customer contact to ensure the relevant critical path milestones are met.
• Create recipes alongside the team, input recipes onto the recipes management system and review the accuracy of all recipes inputted by the team to ensure they meet cost, weight and nutritional requirements.
• Ensure the sourcing and viability of new raw ingredients from an operational, technical and product development in line with Hilton Foods UK Ltd and customer policies.
• Complete and/or review and approve all relevant documentation (feasibility forms, customer submission forms, concept to process handovers etc.) to ensure accuracy of information shared internally and externally.
• Represent food in the feasibility process working with the commercial, operations, technical and purchasing teams to solve any issues to ensure concepts are repeatable, sustainable and scalable.
• Compile product costing information and adapt recipes to balance food quality with achievement of commercial brief targets within customer brand standards.
• Complete, understand and present benchmarking, existing (EPD) and new products (NPD) at internal and customer presentations, passionately demonstrate good market and food trends awareness, to achieve product approval.
• Follow the critical path timelines as directed, escalating and mitigating incomplete tasks and risks to prevent delays in product acceptance and launch.
• Attend factory trial sign off panels to ensure production quality matches the kitchen quality signed off by the customer.
• Manage team performance and personal development utilising the Hilton Compass and e-learning systems.
• Consideration and inclusion of sustainability to all NPD and EPD applying rationale to development of products and supporting data input and collation.
• Act as a Quality Guardian of data collection.
• Ensure the development of the product is done in accordance with the Company new development process, following the good food manufacturing practice.

To succeed as a Food Product Developer we ask that you have the following experience/expertise:

• Ideally educated to degree level with a specialism in convenience science, have entered via an apprentice route or has equivalent work experience in a similar role/environment.
• Experience of successfully validating products and producing high quality documentation.
• Has experience of a similar role demonstrating a proficiency in all elements of product development from concept to launch.
• Has experience operating in a fast-paced dynamic environment.
• Demonstrates analytical skill and ability with experience of producing and reviewing costings.

(These may be trained or developed. These do not all need to be in place at recruitment.)

What you get in return:

On top of working for a fantastic organisation with a family feel and state of the art facilities you will receive a great package with competitive holiday allowance, life assurance of minimum two times yearly salary, opportunities for development and internal promotion, Cycle to work scheme, Share save scheme, variety of discounts at well-known retailers as well as gyms and free car parking on site along a subsidised canteen.

About us:

We are a company that takes pride in their people as it is our people who are at the centre of everything that we do. We value our inclusivity as we believe diversity should be embraced and celebrated. We live and work by these values and that’s what makes Hilton Foods a great place to work.