Ice Cream Product Designer

Job description

About Unilever
With 3.4 billion people in over 190 countries using our products every day, Unilever is a business that makes a real impact on the world. Work on brands that are loved and improve the lives of our consumers and the communities around us. We are driven by our purpose: to make sustainable living commonplace, and it is our belief that doing business the right way drives superior performance. At the heart of what we do is our people – we believe that when our people work with purpose, we will create a better business and a better world.
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We are looking to hire an Ice cream Product Designer, IC R&D, India in our Ice-Cream Research & Development team based in Unilever R&D Bangalore.

Purpose & Context:

With Compass organization effectively in place in Unilever from mid 2022, Ice cream has become a separate business group globally. Overall global ice cream business has a approx. turnover of 7 bl Euro. India Ice cream business is an important and strategic BU, with approx. turnover of 175 mE and is growing strongly at CAGR ~ 15% over the last 3-4 years. Ice cream R&D team supporting this India business has a need for an Ice cream product designer to lead product development activities in NPD projects and drive the growth agenda of business.

The candidate will be a team member of Ice cream R&D, South Asia, working on ice-cream category projects for India. The responsibility of the position is to drive new ice cream innovations, process development, project execution, cost saving programs, planning experiments, executing them with rigor, analysing the information and data and draw scientific conclusions. The role entails understanding and application of principles of food science, food technology, food chemistry, food engineering and microbiology at lab, pilot and factory scale to develop novel ice cream products and processes. 

Carry out new Ice-cream Product & Process Development and Technology transfer activities.

Deliverables of the Role:

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Product development: Work in the laboratory to carry out “on the bench” experiments and in pilot plant to develop novel ice cream products per brief within the cost and regulatory framework.

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Process development: Establishing appropriate process routes for manufacturing different ice cream product formats to specification at lab, pilot and factory scale. Optimize processing parameters.

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Leading projects: Ability to lead small and medium complexity NPD projects independently end to end and effectively manage cross functional business partners.

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Shelf-life stability: conduct studies to establish shelf-life, melt properties and other characteristics of new products, intervene through formulation/process to enhance quality of products.

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Product characterization: Use appropriate measurement techniques (either existing or develop new techniques) to analyze or characterize key attributes of the ingredients, intermediate products and Finished goods.

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Process scale-up: Establish processes developed at lab/pilot-scale in to HUL factories/3Ps to enable commercial production; Trouble-shooting at factory-scale when required; continuously look for / experiment with new ingredients/recipes/technologies to develop products and processes that offer tangible, new benefits to the consumer and business. Prepare Technical transfer documents, train factory/3P personnel.

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Effective liaison with other R&D functions, GDC and RDC teams, factories / 3Ps / UL Supply chain, marketing and other cross functions

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Up to date with ice-cream consumer trends, new Ingredients developments, vendor capabilities; drive value improvement programs

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Work with team to build R&D capability in the identified areas. 

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Drive best practices – New specifications writing (PLM), Adopt Digital R&D working, project management (IPM)t and technical report writing

Required Professional skills:

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Developing ideas

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Experimental ability/Techniques

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Data analysis/ interpretation

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Technical reporting

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Information seeking, mining and processing

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Science and technology expertise

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Project management

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Supplier/vendor development support

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Consumer research

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Commercial Knowledge

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Legal / Regulatory Knowledge

Required Competencies:

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Growth Mindset

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Real accountability

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External orientation

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Action not debate

Required experience:

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Education: Master’s degree in Dairy/Food science or related course

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Work experience: 1-2 Years, Experience in foods R&D, dairy industry, new foods product and process development and scale up preferred.

Travel:

Work based travel, 20-25% of time approx., particularly to manufacturing locations, supplier locations