Food Scientist
Purpose and Scope/General Summary: This position places you within one of the largest global poultry companies, with operations in the U.S., Puerto Rico, Mexico, and the U.K. At Pilgrim's, we are committed to our values and culture, dedicating ourselves to feeding the world and being the best in all we do. Our people are at the heart of our business, and we prioritized providing a safe and well-managed workplace, offering the best opportunities for our team members to thrive and build a better future. For this role, the ideal candidate should have experience in optimizing formulations and food processing for meat products in a production environment.
Responsibilities:
- Learn the details of our value-added product processes to become an internal subject matter expert on industry technology for poultry food processing.
- Research and evaluate new equipment, processes, and technologies to enhance product quality and process efficiency. Work closely with operations, Quality Assurance (QA), and regulatory teams to validate and implement these improvements.
- Collaborate with the Operational Excellence (OE) and Operations teams to optimize processes and processing equipment, maximizing yield and product quality.
- Effectively communicate technical development activities like costing, design of experiment, report analysis, among others to cross-functional teams with simplicity.
- Support and execute pilot projects for new technologies, analyze results and prepare reports to be shared with cross functional teams.
- Work on several projects at once, frequently encountering overlapping deadlines and priorities.
- Work closely with operations and QA teams to address specification and process related quality or yield issues and implement corrective actions, working with product developers as needed to execute.
- Support the OE team in developing robust Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for all current value-added product processes as well as write SOPs for new processes and technologies implemented by R&D.
- Ability to travel up to 50% of the time.
- Other duties as assigned
Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree required. Degree in Food Science, Meat Science, Poultry Science, Animal Science, Engineering, or related field strongly preferred.
- BS & 3-5 years of relative experience
- MS & 0-3 years of experience
- Experience working in food manufacturing facilities, operations, or continuous improvement is highly preferred.
- Strong interpersonal and communication skills.
- Well-versed in Project Management Systems and Recipe Development (e.g., SAP).
- Good understanding of USDA, FDA guidelines with occasional support from manager.
- Proficiency in Microsoft Excel, Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, Microsoft TEAMS / Cisco Webex and at least one statistical software (e.g., JMP, GraphPad prism, etc.).
The applicant who fills this position will be eligible for the following compensation and benefits:
- Benefits: Vision, Medical, and Dental coverage begin after 60 days of employment.
- Paid Time Off: sick leave, vacation, and 6 company observed holidays.
- 401(k): company match begins after the first year of service and follows the company vesting schedule.
- Base salary range of $60,000 - $70,000.
- Incentive Pay: This position is eligible to participate in the Company’s annual bonus plan, the amount of bonus varies and is subject to the standard terms and conditions of the incentive program.