Senior R&D Lead - Food Innovation & Scale-Up

Mars Incorporated in

Chicago (IL)

On-site

USD 119,000 - 164,000

Full time

14 days+

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Benefits offered by this job

Company bonus

Job summary

Mars Incorporated is seeking a Senior Manager R&D for Nature's Bakery (Finance) to lead product development with advanced technical leadership, guiding a small team and managing resources for innovation and renovation projects.

You will work autonomously on technical delivery, risk management, and associate development while coordinating with R&D, manufacturing, quality, supply chain, and regulatory partners to ensure timely, compliant results.

Qualifications

Bachelor's degree in a technical discipline is required.
10–12+ years of experience with product-development expertise and people leadership.
Deep expertise in product innovation, formulation, prototyping, scale-up, and commercialization readiness.
Strong capability in technical strategy, experiment planning, data analysis, risk assessment, and documentation.
Ability to lead complex programs, direct team execution, and develop standards/best practices.

Responsibilities

Set team priorities, direct product development activities, allocate work, and coach up to three direct reports.
Plan and execute technical work to deliver product innovation, formulation, prototyping, quality, scale-up, and commercialization readiness.
Use data, experimentation, risk assessment, and technical judgment to resolve complex issues.
Partner with cross-functional teams including R&D, manufacturing, quality, supply chain, commercial, regulatory, and external partners.
Document assumptions, specifications, methods, decisions, learnings, and handoffs according to governance requirements.
Lead complex investigations, establish best practices, influence technical strategy, develop talent, and ensure team performance.