Product Development Specialist – Bread & Bakery Manufacturing
ROTELLA'S ITALIAN BAKERY
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Benefits offered by this job
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
Education
Job description
Rotella’s Italian Bakery Inc. is hiring a Product Development Specialist to help develop, improve, test, and commercialize bread and bakery products in a high-volume manufacturing environment. This is a hands-on role for someone who understands dough, baking, production scale-up, and the discipline required to make products consistently on commercial bakery lines.
- Develop, test, and refine bread, bun, roll, and specialty bakery products from concept through production launch.
- Create and adjust formulas with attention to dough characteristics, fermentation, proofing, bake profile, texture, flavor, appearance, shelf life, and consistency.
- Partner closely with production, quality, purchasing, sales, and operations teams to ensure new and existing products can be manufactured efficiently at scale.
- Conduct bench trials, pilot runs, production trials, sensory evaluations, and product improvement work.
- Translate customer needs, market trends, and operational requirements into products that are practical, profitable, and repeatable.
- Document formulas, ingredients, processing steps, production parameters, testing results, and finished product specifications.
- Support troubleshooting for product quality issues related to dough handling, mixing, proofing, baking, cooling, slicing, packaging, and shelf life.
- Identify ingredient, process, or equipment opportunities that improve quality, efficiency, cost, or manufacturability.
- Maintain a strong focus on food safety, quality systems, sanitation, allergen control, GMPs, and consistency.
- Experience in bread, bakery, dough, baked goods, or food manufacturing product development preferred.
- Strong understanding of baking or food science, ingredient functionality, fermentation, mixing, proofing, baking, cooling, packaging, and finished product quality.
- Hands-on experience with formulas, production trials, ingredient substitutions, troubleshooting, and scale-up from test batch to production.
- Ability to work closely with production, quality, purchasing, sales, and leadership to balance product quality, cost, manufacturability, and customer requirements.
- Food science, baking science, culinary, or related education is preferred; equivalent bakery manufacturing experience will be considered.
- Strong communication, documentation, organization, and follow-through skills.
- Comfortable spending time on the production floor and working directly with operators, supervisors, and quality teams.
We are looking for someone who is curious, practical, detail-oriented, and passionate about bread. The right person will enjoy improving products, solving manufacturing challenges, and helping bring bakery ideas to life in a way that works in real production. This position requires both creativity and strong manufacturing discipline.
- Competitive compensation based on experience
- Health, dental, vision, and life insurance
- 401(k) and profit-sharing opportunities
- Paid time off
- Paid Holidays
- 401(k)
- Dental insurance
- Health insurance
- Life insurance
- Paid time off
- Vision insurance
- Experience in bread, bakery, dough, baked goods, or food manufacturing product development preferred.
- Strong understanding of baking or food science, ingredient functionality, fermentation, mixing, proofing, baking, cooling, packaging, and finished product quality.
- Hands-on experience with formulas, production trials, ingredient substitutions, troubleshooting, and scale-up from test batch to production.
- Ability to work closely with production, quality, purchasing, sales, and leadership to balance product quality, cost, manufacturability, and customer requirements.
- Food science, baking science, culinary, or related education is preferred; equivalent bakery manufacturing experience will be considered.
- Strong communication, documentation, organization, and follow-through skills.
- Comfortable spending time on the production floor and working directly with operators, supervisors, and quality teams.
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