Senior Data & Modelling Scientist in High Wycombe

As proud bakers and chocolatiers and custodians of iconic global brands, we don’t compromise on the quality of ingredients in our products or on the people we hire. We are looking for entrepreneurial spirits who share our passion for bringing happiness to our consumers and who embody our Winning Traits.

To succeed at pladis you need to be purpose-led, resilient and positive because we expect pace and agility, insist on collaboration and demand accountability. If that is your thing, then pladis offers global ambition, a clear Vision and roadmap for success, challenge, and unrivalled opportunities to learn and make an impact.

Context and role purpose

pladis operates in highly competitive, fast-moving markets where it is essential to maintain and extend market share through profitable branded growth. Successful innovation through product development, continuous value improvement and consumer perceived quality superiority vs. the competition are critical.

This is a critical role responsible for building analytical tools and models that translate technical results into innovative and sustainable systems that help to accelerate the idea to product process. This role will work closely with peers in the global Innovation & Technology team to ensure an agile and smooth flow of information from insights to industrial relevant outcomes.

This role sits in the Global Innovation and Technology Team under the Breakthrough Product Director to ensure direct translation of opportunities against an ambitious and transformational breakthrough innovation strategy that is aligned to the growth ambition and sustainability aspirations of the company.

The role requires an individual who is competent and skilled at working across cultures and functions and collaborating to deliver with others. They need to be able to work effectively with external partners to identify appropriate opportunities and drive development of innovative solutions, best practice approaches and systems.

Key areas of focus for the role will be:

• Development and application of advanced modelling, statistical methods to accelerate product innovation.
• Improve ingredient and formulation understanding.
• Own design of experiments, predictive models, and learning cycles.
• Drives data governance, data quality, and modelling infrastructure.
• Ensures insights translate into faster, smarter technical decision-making.
• Developing solutions to technical hurdles.

The ideal candidate will have excellent core technical skills and be able to understand the needs of the business, to create an exciting data and modelling technology agenda. The individual will be a self-starter and possess a drive for results.

pladis organization model is based on 8 regions with full accountability of their own P&L:

• Global
• UK & Ireland
• Europe & Emerging Markets (EEM)
• Türkiye, Central Asia (TURCA)
• Middle East, North Africa and India (MENAI)
• Americas (Ams)
• Asia Pacific (APAC)
• GODIVA (Global)

Within the Global Functions team supports all regions, to leverage size, expertise and best practices. Among those functions stand Global R&D and Procurement. Global R&D works hand in hand on many initiatives with partners in the other functions (both globally and within regions) to create strong competitive advantages for pladis.

Specifically on Innovation and Technology Data Modelling, we need to:

• Define and deliver a medium to long term roadmap and align an agenda to drive innovation sustainability and productivity – build the internal cross-functional expertise and relationships to deliver that agenda.
• Support the Global Procurement team as we build strong and mid-term Sourcing Strategies.
• Build strong collaborative relationships with Suppliers to capture the best practices on the market and monitor project implementation.

The role will report to the Global R&D Head of Cocoa Innovation. It is expected that the incumbent will work very closely with their counterparts across the Central Innovation & Technology team to effectively deliver the joint growth and transformation agenda and sustainability deliverables.

Principle Accountabilities

• Build and apply predictive models to understand ingredient interactions, product functionality, and clean-label substitution pathways—addressing rising consumer demand for healthier and sustainable products.
• Develop formulation optimization models that reduce physical experimentation and accelerate R&D cycle time.
• Partner with product developers to translate modelling outputs into actionable formulation and processing guidance.
• Develop machine learning models for forecasting, optimization, and scenario simulation across the Innovation and Technology breakthrough programs.
• Lead application of AI/ML tools in areas such as product and process prediction with primary focus in Cocoa and Chocolate.
• Guide teams on appropriate model governance, validation, and robustness.
• Design experiments (DoE) and multivariate studies to generate high-value datasets for modelling and scientific discovery.
• Build hybrid mechanistic + data-driven models to support shelf-life prediction, process optimization, and stability studies.
• Translate complex modelling outputs into visual, decision-ready insights for technical and non-technical audiences.
• Collaborate with external partners (universities, tech providers, suppliers) to bring in cutting-edge modelling capabilities.

pladis is an Equal Opportunity Employer, committed to hiring a diverse workforce. All openings will be filled based on qualifications without regard to race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, marital status, veteran status, disability, age, religion or any other classification protected by law.

We operate a strict Preferred Supplier List. If you are a recruitment agency and wish to submit candidates to be considered for this vacancy, you must have agreed to, and signed, our terms of business. We will not accept CVs from any other sources other than those currently on our PSL. We will not pay a fee for any candidate that has not been represented by a provider on our PSL.

Formed in 2016, pladis is the proud steward of over 300 years of family baking and confectionery experience. The expertise of our 16,000-strong global workforce spans 27 bakeries across 11 countries and is united by our purpose: to ‘bring happiness with every bite’.