Product Developer

Position: Product Developer

Location: Kent – Hybrid

Role Summary

This position plays a central role in delivering new products and innovation initiatives from early concept through to market readiness. You will translate customer ideas and internal innovation briefs into technically robust, commercially viable, and compliant product solutions, ensuring alignment with agreed quality, cost, sustainability, and regulatory requirements across launch markets.

Working across internal teams and external manufacturing partners, you will manage development risks, support scale-up and implementation, and contribute to improving how products are developed and launched end to end.

Core Responsibilities

Product Development & Innovation Delivery

You will take ownership of assigned customer-led development projects and internally driven innovation initiatives, ensuring they progress efficiently from concept through to implementation. This includes:

• Designing and developing formulations that meet defined customer briefs and technical requirements
• Delivering solutions across intermediate premixes, nutritional products (human or pet), and dairy alternative applications
• Supporting transfer to manufacturing sites, whether internal facilities or external partners

Scoping, Risk & Decision-Making

Strong front-end scoping is critical to success in this role. You will:

• Work directly with customers and internal stakeholders to define clear technical and commercial project requirements
• Ensure feasibility, indicative costs, and approval criteria are agreed at the outset
• Identify potential technical, regulatory, supply, or operational risks and ensure mitigation plans are in place throughout the project lifecycle
• Ensure development outputs remain aligned with the parameters agreed during scoping

Technical & Nutritional Expertise

You will act as a technical contributor across the business, applying scientific and nutritional knowledge to support product development and customer engagement:

• Develop formulations that balance sensory performance, stability, regulatory compliance, shelf life, and cost
• Conduct or coordinate sensory assessments prior to customer submission where required
• Apply ingredient and process knowledge to make informed recommendations on shelf life and packaging suitability
• Advise customers on appropriate approaches for shelf-life validation
• Provide formulation and nutritional input to internal teams and customers as needed

Collaboration, Training & Continuous Improvement

Beyond individual projects, you will contribute to broader capability building and process improvement by:

• Supporting sales teams and customers through technical training and project preparation
• Delivering product development training to wider internal teams
• Working with procurement and quality functions to identify, assess, and approve new raw material suppliers
• Providing technical input into raw material approvals and supplier onboarding
• Continuously developing your understanding of functional ingredients, nutrients, and market trends to strengthen innovation capability
• Contributing ideas to improve development processes, tools, and ways of working

Experience & Profile

We’re looking for someone who combines technical capability with a proactive, improvement-focused mindset:

• BSc or MSc in Food Science, a scientific discipline, or equivalent industry experience
• Background in food, nutrition, or supplement product development
• Strong understanding of ingredient functionality, including vitamins, minerals, flavours, colours, additives, and sweeteners
• Experience in developing premixes, nutritional products, or food supplements
• A strong interest in sustainability, innovation, and continuous improvement