Licious - Manager - R&D - New Product Development - FMCG/Food Processing

Licious is looking for an experienced, adaptive, creative & adventurous R&D Manager, who's hyper excited about performance & has sense of deep ownership and responsibility. At Licious, the TEAM is building India's 1st consumer tech food brand and the category we- ve chosen to disrupt, to start with, is the Fresh Meats and Gourmet category. This category is one of the largest consumer categories in India's retail landscape & offers tremendous opportunities to create a world class brand in India.

We believe that at the heart of the company is our unflinching commitment to delivering world class quality of products to the urban consumer with the experiential aftertaste continuing well into the last mile by awesome customer service & great technology acting as an enabler.

Position : R&D Manager

Location : Bangalore

Job Description :

Job Role : New Product Development

Travel : Yes, 10 % of the Time

Description :

Product Development :

- Manage Development of formulation for culinary based product.

- Lead development of formula & prototyping in close coordination with Innovation chefs and ensure deployment. Represent R&D in project discussions.

- Leading the OTIF delivery of all technical tasks/R&D relevant elements of regional innovation project by leading across R&D workstreams (formulation, processing, packaging, TM) and SC.

- Support the regulatory assessment for existing & new products.

- Managing risk (lead technical risk assessment in project team and monitor implementation of identified risk mitigation), claims and legal compliance with local and regional requirements

- Coaching, supporting and developing team members including dealing with people related issue, giving training within and outside team, facilitate sharing of learning within the team and develop new ways of working within team as part of continuous improvement

- Managing risk (lead technical risk assessment in project team and monitor implementation of identified risk mitigation), claims and legal compliance with local and regional requirements

- Coaching, supporting and developing team members including dealing with people related issue, giving training within and outside team, facilitate sharing of learning within the team and develop new ways of working within team as part of continuous improvement.

Innovation Projects :

- Product development work stream leader in the cross functional project team.

- Responsible for specification of formulation, process and Quality Assurance regimes to support / enforce these specs / agreed technical action standards.

- Drive rigor, risk assessment & mitigation, safety during projects delivery.

- Responsible for OTIF implementation of projects for culinary based products.

- Responsible for project execution in line with the best practices;

- Manage expectations of key stakeholders by providing regular feedback on project progress.

Value Improvement projects :

- Identify potential areas of flexing current specification in existing raw material to drive potential savings.

Capability :

- Capability to coordinate the development of finished products in line with customer preference and desired quality using a range of raw materials with help of Innovation chefs.

- Capability for risk assessment and mitigation. Accountable for claims and legal compliance with help of SOs / Distributors as applicable.

- Work closely with Innovation chefs and support implementation of technologies in line with recommendations as required by project teams.

- Support marketing team in benchmarking the competition at select markets.

REQUIRED TECHNICAL SKILLS : Background in food & beverage science, product development skills is a must - Process engineering skills is desirable; Understanding of regulatory requirements for export markets like EU / Middle east. - Basic understanding of Packaging for F & B. - Knowledge of statistics is desirable

GENERAL SKILLS : Good communication and presentation skills - Analytical mindset - Project Management - Ability to work in cross functional/cultural team

STANDARD OF LEADERSHIP (SOL) : Consumer and Customer Focus - Accountability and responsibility - Bias for Action - Team working

REQUIRED EXPERIENCE : Preferably 6-8 years in R&D / product development/ Processing - Foods; Basic knowledge on food processing will be preferred

EDUCATION : M.Sc. Food Technology / Meat processing/ B-tech with working experience in food industry.

Our Promise to You :

- We will value self-awareness, intellectual honesty, judgment, empathy and positive energy over years of experience

- We have no industry baggage and we are willing to try out new ideas

- We are always excited to hear from you

- Exposure of working in a consumer brand- handling corporate, back end and front-end operations