R&D Product Development Manager

You will be leading seasoning development activities across various snack brands and products in the PepsiCo India region. Your role will involve flavor ideation, seasoning development or reformulation, ecosystem partnerships with flavor and ingredient houses, seasoning scale up, and seasoning qualification. Your responsibilities will include leading innovations and seasoning reformulation to drive human sustainability, productivity, and competitive advantage for brand Kurkure and Premium. You will support Chef and culinary engagements to build a future pipeline. Additionally, you will collaborate and partner with internal stakeholders such as PD, Marketing, Consumer Insights, Sensory and Consumer Product Insights, Quality, as well as external stakeholders like Seasoning suppliers to leverage their tools and expertise in order to deliver business targets against the briefs. You will also support the creation, update, and approvals of specifications through online tools and the internal project governance process. Risk management will be an essential part of your role as you identify potential technical risks associated with future strategies and develop mitigation plans. You will collaborate with Nutrition and Regulatory functions to accurately implement guardrails and targets in advance of project delivery and showcase an advanced level of understanding in these areas. Implementing basic project management and seasoning functionality tools during the development process will be crucial. To qualify for this role, you should have a Masters's degree in Food Science or Food Technology. You should also possess 5-7 years of experience in project management related to product development and/or seasoning development activities, processes, and systems. A good understanding of sensory evaluation processes, sensory discernment, and the ability to provide constructive feedback on product/flavor attributes will be beneficial for this position.,