Senior Product Technologist Cream Cheese

About Flora Food Group

We offer consumers a compelling choice in four growing categories: butters and spreads, creams, liquids and cheeses. We hold leadership positions in many of the 100 countries we operate in, with iconic brands including Flora, Becel+ProActiv, Blue Band, Country Crock, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, Rama, and Violife, together with our local brands and Professional business.

Global branded food champion Flora Food Group, offers the next generation of delicious, natural, nutritious food. Our products are more affordable and more sustainable than their dairy equivalents.

Location: Wageningen, Netherlands

Hybrid

About the position

As a Senior Food Technologist, you will play a key role in shaping the future of our cheese portfolio—including plant-based, hybrid, and dairy products—by leading innovation, renovation, and cost-saving projects. Based at our Wageningen Food Science Centre, equipped with state-of-the-art labs, pilot plants, and a professional application kitchen, you will drive technical excellence and deliver best-in-class product designs that delight consumers worldwide.

This is a hands-on role requiring strong technical leadership, creativity, and collaboration across global, multi-functional teams. You will work on projects from concept to scale-up, ensuring compliance with food safety, quality standards, and regulatory requirements.

You will:

• Lead product development across lab, pilot plant, and factory scales for hybrid, and dairy cheese formulations.

• Create culinary application tests for cheese products based on scientific and technical data to validate performance in real-world usage.

• Design and optimize formulations for taste, texture, nutrition, and functionality, leveraging expertise in food physics, rheology, and emulsion systems.

• Plan and execute trials (lab, pilot, and factory), analyze data, and translate insights into actionable improvements.

• Develop prototypes and characterize them for sensory, physical-chemical properties, and shelf-life performance.

• Create culinary application tests for cheese products based on scientific and technical data to validate performance in real-world usage.

• Provide technical leadership to ensure timely and accurate delivery of R&D milestones across global projects.

• Collaborate cross-functionally with food scientists, packaging developers, microbiologists, and consumer insight teams to integrate technical solutions into broader business strategies.

• Prepare comprehensive reports for stage-gate reviews, including formulation data, sensory evaluations, and market analysis.

• Contribute to technical specifications for sourcing and supply chain, ensuring compliance with GMP, food safety, and quality standards.

• Drive continuous improvement initiatives to enhance efficiency and effectiveness across all stages of product development.

• Travel for workshops, supplier visits, and scale-up trials as needed.

So what does it take to be successful in this role?  
You are a seasoned food industry professional with a degree in Food Science, Food Technology, Chemical Engineering, or a related field, ideally complemented by an advanced degree. You have over five years of experience in product development, preferably within dairy cheese or cheese analogue categories in an FMCG environment. You bring proven expertise in proteins, emulsion matrices, fats and oils, or food physics and rheology, and you are skilled in culinary application testing, with the ability to translate technical data into meaningful consumer product performance. You have strong project management capabilities, effectively managing multiple stakeholders while delivering projects on time and in full. You possess an analytical mindset with hands-on experience interpreting factory and pilot trial data. You thrive in fast-paced, dynamic environments, demonstrating proactivity, adaptability, and clear communication in English, both written and spoken. Additionally, you are willing to travel internationally to support project needs.

What’s Next?

If this position sounds interesting, please hit the apply button now!

We understand your resume might not be up to date and recommend that you apply with what you have or your LinkedIn Profile. Flora Food Group is dedicated to building an inclusive and diverse workplace, we understand that you might not meet all the requirements stated in the description, but we encourage you to apply anyway. You might be the right candidate for this role or other roles. 

Flora Food Group is an employer committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace and equal opportunities for all. We recruit based only on values, qualifications, performance, skills, behaviours, experience, and knowledge. We ensure job advertisements are free from unintentional bias.

No personal characteristics should be a barrier to joining Flora Food Group. We prohibit discrimination and harassment based on race, color, sex, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, genetic information, pregnancy, or other personal characteristics.