NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT WET TECHNICAL LEAD

NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT WET TECHNICAL LEAD

ACR-2605-192

BARCELONA

Your Role

We are looking for a NPD Wet Technical Lead for the R&D team, who will report to the Wet Development Manager . In this role, you will be a key technical expert in wet petfood, ensuring high-quality execution of innovation and renovation projects. You will strengthen the team’s wet-technology capabilities, support wet developers working on innovation projects, and enhance overall technical excellence in product design for performance, nutritional and functional claims.

You will be the lead developer for the most innovative concepts, technical advisor for developers and tactical coordinator for wet project portfolio.

Wet Product Development & Formulation

• Provide expert guidance on formulation, performance, nutrition, and functionality of wet products, complementing the company’s stronger historical expertise in dry.
• Develop and optimize wet food recipes that are fully aligned with consumer needs and brand positioning, efficient in terms of production and cost, high-performing and compliant with nutritional requirements.
• Review and validate nutrient levels, analytical expectations, and formulation constraints specific to wet technologies.
• Support ideation and opportunity scouting with Innovation teams.
• Support external developments together with Marketing and Procurement.
• Contribute to recipe cost optimization with Formulation and Procurement teams.
• Collaborate with factories, external pilot plants and 3PMs to ensure feasibility of wet recipes under real processing conditions, prepare and monitor industrial trials, validate product quality, texture, palatability, microbiology and shelf life.
• Support creation and update of specifications, control plans, and technical documentation.

Product Performance Expertise (Wet Palatability)

• Apply and interpret wet-food-specific palatability protocols, including technical solution selection and integration, interface with sensory and animal testing teams, translate palatability test results into actionable formulation recommendations.
• Team’s reference in running and interpreting tests related to wet products, including support to protocol and results interpretation for functional studies, support to any nutritional or physiological protocol involving wet diets, translate palatability test results into actionable formulation recommendations.

Wet Innovation Portfolio Coordination

• Support coordination of NPD wet innovation projects to ensure efficient execution aligned with the Innovation Masterplan.
• Collaborate with Marketing and Innovation teams to maintain clear alignment on priorities.
• Promote NPD-Wet participation in R&D-driven initiatives contributing to new innovation proposals.
• Coordinate resource allocation within the NPD-Wet team and identify opportunities or bottlenecks proactively.
• Promote the consistent use of INNO tools and processes across the team.

What we are looking for

• Passion for dogs and cats.
• Degree in Food Technology, Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Biology, or a related field. Master’s or PhD preferred.
• Solid experience working with wet petfood in a broad range of formats, technologies and presentations.
• Advanced knowledge of wet product performance on palatability (technical solutions, protocols, sensory interpretation, etc).
• Proven experience in digestibility, urinary, functional and nutritional and interpretation of results for formulation improvement.
• Strong understanding of how to formulate wet products to meet nutritional requirements, including micronutrient balance under thermal processing.
• Full proficiency in defining and executing specifications, control plans and technical documentation.
• Excellent communicative skills at both technical level (for the role of internal expert advisor) and managerial level (for the role of coordinator).
• Strong collaborative skills in cross-functional environments.
• Excellent organizational & project management skills.
• Creativity, optimism, problem-solving skills and eagerness to learn are essential.
• Professional fluency in English. Fluency in Italian is desired.
• Availability for travel to plants and partners (30-50% of time).