Senior Cocoa & Chocolate Scientist

Want to help us bring happiness to the world? Want to join an ambitious and fast growing global biscuits and confectionery business investing heavily in iconic global brands, infrastructure and people? Then this is the place for you.

As proud bakers and chocolatiers and custodians of iconic global brands, we don’t compromise on the quality of ingredients in our products or on the people we hire. We are looking for entrepreneurial spirits who share our passion for bringing happiness to our consumers and who embody our Winning Traits.

To succeed at pladis you need to be purpose-led, resilient and positive to succeed here because we expect pace and agility, we insist on collaboration and demand accountability. If that is your thing, then pladis offers global ambition, a clear Vision and roadmap for success, challenge, and unrivalled opportunities to learn and make an impact

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pladis operates in highly competitive, fast-moving markets where it is essential to maintain and extend market share through profitable branded growth. Successful innovation through product development, continuous value improvement and consumer perceived quality superiority vs. the competition are critical.

This is a critical role responsible for building the know-how on Cocoa and translate that into innovative and sustainable chocolate confectionery and baked products. This role will work closely with other functions, e.g. procurement, sensory, marketing, regulatory, etc., to ensure an agile and smooth translation of science to products.

This role seats in the Global Innovation and Technology Team under the Breakthrough Product Director to ensure direct translation of opportunities against an ambitious and transformational breakthrough innovation strategy that is aligned to the growth ambition and sustainability aspirations of the company.

The role requires an individual who is competent and skilled at working across cultures and functions and collaborating to deliver with others. They need to be able to work effectively with external partners to identify appropriate opportunities and drive development of innovative solutions, best practice approaches and systems.

Key areas of focus for the role will be on:

• Know-how on Cocoa Materials and Chocolate Technologies

• Translation of above to confectionary and baked applications

• Developing solutions to technical hurdles

• Providing a technical response to product challenges

• Owning and delivering test trials from small-bench to medium-pilot scale and support upscaling to factory scale.

• Managing project plans

The ideal candidate will have excellent core technical skills and be able to understand the needs of the business, our consumers and customers to drive an exciting cocoa and chocolate technology agenda. The individual will be a self-starter and possess a drive for results.

pladis organization model is based on 8 regions with full accountability of their own P&L

• Global

• UK & Ireland

• Europe & Emerging Markets (EEM)

• Türkiye, Central Asia (TURCA)

• Middle East, North Africa and India (MENAI)

• Americas (Ams)

• Asia pacific (APAC)

• GODIVA (Global)

Within the Global Functions team supports all regions, to leverage size, expertise and best practices. Among those functions stand Global R&D and Procurement.

Global R&D works hand in hand on many initiatives with partners in the other functions (both globally and within regions) to create strong competitive advantages for pladis including:

• Ingredients Technologies and Innovation

• Product Innovation

• Portfolio transformation for Health and Happiness

• Sustainability (i.e. environment-friendly initiatives)

Specifically on Breakthrough Cocoa programme, we need to:

• Define and deliver a medium to long term roadmap and align an agenda to drive innovation sustainability and productivity – build the internal cross-functional expertise and relationships to deliver that agenda.

• Support the Global Procurement team as we build strong and mid-term Sourcing Strategies.

• Build strong collaborative relationships with Suppliers to capture the best practices on the market and monitor project implementation.

The role will report to the Head of Global R&D Head of Cocoa Innovation*. It is expected that the incumbent will work very closely with their counterparts across the Central Innovation & technology team to effectively delivery the joint growth and transformation agenda and sustainability deliverables.

Principle Accountabilities

• Lead the creation and optimization of cocoa blends and chocolate products that engine Innovation pipeline.

• Build, curate and share deep knowledge of emerging cocoa processing methods, materials science and industry trends.

• Drive the development of proprietary and sustainable cocoa solutions, including cross-category product designs.

• Lead research and development of novel cocoa extenders, substitutes and flavour-modulating solutions.

• Own the end-to-end understanding of scalability, from bean processing through chocolate, confectionery and baked finished goods

• Lead prototyping cycles, pilot plant and factory trials, ensuring robust technical validation and readiness for launch.

• Provide expert technical support to operations, delivering solutions that balance quality, cost, performance and sustainability.

• Identify, develop and progress patentable opportunities within cocoa materials, chocolate technologies and related processes

• Work collaboratively and in partnership with other functions and teams (e.g. Sensory and Consumers Insights, Procurement, Supply Chain, Quality)

pladis is an Equal Opportunity Employer, committed to hiring a diverse workforce. All openings will be filled based on qualifications without regard to race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, marital status, veteran status, disability, age, religion or any other classification protected by law.

We operate a strict Preferred Supplier List. If you are a recruitment agency and wish to submit candidate to be considered for this vacancy, you must have agreed to, and signed, our terms of business. We will not accept CVs from any other sources other than those currently on our PSL. We will not pay a fee for any candidate that has not been represented by a provider on our PSL.