Your Opportunity as a Scientist, Process Engineer- Pet Research & Development Team

In this role you will be responsible for developing, optimizing, and implementing proprietary process technologies and equipment for our innovation roadmap. The R&D Scientist (Engineer) will drive process development for innovation from concept through commercialization, resulting in the launch of new pet snack or food products. This position is also responsible for the improvement of existing process, value engineering, and technology development to enable new product development or cost improvement. The candidate must be comfortable leading functional teams or projects with moderate resource requirements, risk and/or complexity.

Location: Orrville, OH Corporate Campus

Work Arrangements: Minimum 40% in person presence supporting the Presence with Purpose Model (increased based business needs)

In this role you will:

Lead the development of robust processes to deliver the requisite finished product attributes, guardrails & metrics (ex: design criteria, consumer preference, cost, feasibility, timeline etc.).
Efficiently design, plan, coordinate and execute experiments from bench-top through manufacturing scale. Accountabilities can include, creating test plans, process flow diagrams, designing equipment and tooling, data analysis & interpretation and assessing process feasibility.
Lead a technical and cross-functional team to successfully commission & launch new innovation / renovation projects at JMS and/or Co-packer manufacturing facilities.
Apply fundamental engineering and extrusion principles in combination with a creative mindset & critical thinking to develop novel process solutions.
Review and summarize experimental results and provide go-forward recommendations to the pet leadership team. Communicate project updates with credibility to internal & external stakeholders.
Participate as an active member of cross-functional project teams comprised of individuals from a variety of disciplines, including Marketing, Finance, Operations, Engineering, Procurement, Co-pack and QA to scale successful processes to commercial production scale.

The Right Place for You

We are bold, kind, strive to do the right thing, we play to win, and we believe in a strong community that thrives together. Our culture is rooted in our Basic Beliefs, and we believe in supporting every employee by meeting their physical, emotional, and financial needs.

What we are looking for:

Minimum Requirements:

Bachelor's degree in Engineering
Depending on degree type/level, a minimum of five (5) years of relevant experience in Research and Development or a technical role
Ability to travel up to 30% of schedule (to manufacturing and vendor locations)
Ability to execute designed experiments (DOE) and generate relevant product and process data to identify and mitigate process development and scale-up risks

Additional skills and experience that we think would make someone successful in this role:

Advanced degree (Masters/PhD) and Chemical/Food Engineering
Experience with extrusion
Experience with Food (Pet Food/Snacks, Human Food/Snacks) extrusion
Experience with other food processing technologies (i.e. thermal processing, baking, molding, forming, etc.)
Experience with statistical software (JMP, Minitab, etc.)
Should be comfortable in team meetings, creating and managing timelines, execution of plans, contingency planning, and risk management
Should be a self-starter, have strong personal leadership, and able to work autonomously to plan, implement, monitor, and deliver objectives
Ability to collaborate and work across multi-functional boundaries in a dynamic project environment

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