Who are we?
Besides being an international vegetable-breeding company, Enza Zaden is also an independent family business. For three generations, an entrepreneurial spirit, long-term vision and focus on innovation have characterized our company’s distinctive features and healthy growth. https://www.enzazaden.com/Enza Zaden has a worldwide presence. Our head office is located in Enkhuizen, The Netherlands. We have research stations, commercial subsidiaries and seed operation subsidiaries and joint ventures all over the globe. This makes Enza Zaden an international company, or rather, as we like to put it ourselves, a multi-local company. We work with more than 2800 local people who know all the ins and outs of our sector and their local market.
What are you going to do?
This role will be responsible for designing and optimizing plant and lab processes, managing equipment reliability, lead scale-up projects, and ensuring operational excellence through SOPs and training.
Process Design & Optimization
- Design and continuously improve seed processing workflows: cleaning, grading, drying, treating, coating, and packaging.
- Optimize lab workflows for seed testing (germination, purity, moisture, health).
- Collaborate with Quality, R&D, and Production teams to align process parameters with seed standards.
Equipment Management & Maintenance
- Oversee selection, installation, commissioning, and lifecycle management of plant and lab equipment.
- Develop and implement preventive and predictive maintenance schedules.
- Maintain calibration and servicing records for lab instruments (e.g., moisture meters, ELISA kits, germination chambers).
Reliability Engineering
- Conduct root cause analysis (RCA), FMEA, and reliability improvement initiatives for critical equipment.
- Monitor equipment performance and downtime trends to drive continuous improvement.
- Ensure compliance with TPM and ISO standards.
Project Scale-Up & Commissioning
- Lead scale-up of pilot processes to full production capacity.
- Lead in layout planning, vendor coordination, and commissioning of new processing lines.
- Validate new equipment and processes for throughput, quality, and safety.
SOP Development & Training
- Draft and update SOPs for plant and lab operations.
- Conduct training sessions for operators, technicians, and lab staff.
- Ensure adherence to ISTA, ISO, and internal quality protocols.
Lab Equipment Integration
- Manage lab equipment reliability and ensure seamless integration with production decisions.
- Align lab testing outputs with batch release, rejection, and traceability systems.
- Support digitalization of lab data for real-time decision-making.
As a future colleague at Enza Zaden India Pvt. Ltd, you bring
- 8–12 years of experience in process engineering, preferably in seed, agri-inputs, food, or pharma industries.
- Strong understanding of mechanical systems, automation, and lab instrumentation.
- Hands-on experience with seed processing equipment (gravity separators, dryers, treaters).
- Exposure to reliability engineering tools and maintenance systems.
- Good documentation, analytical, and cross-functional collaboration skills.
- Strong process orientation and attention to details
- Good communication and documentation skills
- Exposure to Lean, Six Sigma or TPM practices
- Willingness to work in plant environment
- Mindset with focus on continues improvement
Enza Zaden is a vegetable breeding company that develops vegetable varieties and produces and sells seeds of these varieties worldwide, both for conventional and organic growers. With more than 80 years of experience, we work with the best that nature offers and support this with state-of-the-art technologies to speed up our breeding process. Our mission is to provide access to healthy and diverse vegetables to everyone worldwide. With more than 2800 passionate colleagues around the world, we work together every day to create the vegetables of tomorrow.