Bakery Product Development Specialist — Scale & Launch

ROTELLA'S ITALIAN BAKERY; La Vista (NE); On-site; USD 60,000 - 95,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation

Health, dental, vision, life insurance

401(k) and profit-sharing

Paid time off

Paid Holidays

Job summary

Rotella’s Italian Bakery in Nebraska seeks a Product Development Specialist to create and improve high-volume bread and bakery products. You’ll work hands-on on dough, fermentation, and production scale-up to ensure repeatable, profitable results on commercial bakery lines.

Join a team focused on food safety, quality, and process improvement. You’ll collaborate with production, QA, purchasing, and sales to translate market needs into manufacturable products.

Qualifications

• Experience in bread, bakery, dough, baked goods, or food manufacturing product development preferred.
• Hands-on with formulas, trials, substitutions, troubleshooting, and scale-up.
• Able to balance product quality, cost, manufacturability, and customer needs.

Responsibilities

• Develop, test, and refine bread and bakery products from concept to launch.
• Adjust formulas for dough characteristics, fermentation, bake profile, texture, and shelf life.
• Partner with production, quality, purchasing, sales, and operations to scale manufactured products.
• Conduct bench trials, pilot runs, sensory evaluations, and product improvements.
• Document formulas, ingredients, processing steps, production parameters, and specs.
• Support troubleshooting for dough handling, mixing, proofing, baking, cooling, slicing, and packaging.
• Identify opportunities to improve quality, efficiency, cost, or manufacturability.
• Maintain focus on food safety, sanitation, GMPs, and allergen control.

Skills

Bread & bakery knowledge

Dough handling

Formulation & scale-up

Cross-functional collaboration

Documentation & records

Production floor experience

Education

Food science / baking science / culinary education

Job description

Rotella’s Italian Bakery in Nebraska seeks a Product Development Specialist to create and improve high-volume bread and bakery products. You’ll work hands-on on dough, fermentation, and production scale-up to ensure repeatable, profitable results on commercial bakery lines.

Join a team focused on food safety, quality, and process improvement. You’ll collaborate with production, QA, purchasing, and sales to translate market needs into manufacturable products.