Technical R&D Expert Sweet Treats Bakery

Share our taste for life!
Together, we want to empower you to achieve this mission. We value you as a person and actively support you on your professional journey, while caring about your future. Join our big little family and let’s make products for you and the world to love. 
Do you share our taste for life?

Your role
As Technical R&D Expert Sweet Treats, you act as a the “GO TO” expert within this Frozen Bakery Domain and you provide support to R&D-colleagues and different departments such as marketing, procurement, production, quality etc.  You create added value by providing input as a key success factor of the Bakery Products strategy. You reinforce the future of proactive innovations in Sweet bakery Treats for the Bakery Products business line 

Your key responsibilities?
As Product and technology expert in Sweet Treats Bakery, you:

• Know the plant capabilities and product range of all the product applications in Sweet Treats
• Lead innovation and customer innovation project from medium complexity. 
• Follow market innovations related to ingredient and process technologies for your category domain. You actively follow market trends, competitors and new developments in the market.
• Support the sr tech expert and product developers in developing solutions to medium size complex problem statements.
• Support and follow new investment projects
• Give technical support to marketing, sales and product developers
• Aid the technical screening of new requests in the assessment process on complexity and risk
• Ensure information sharing and good best practices throughout the Vandemoortele community. You also give trainings internal and external
• Works on continuous improvement plans in the category to create Best in Class tasty end products
• Create a solid external network with ingredient and equipment suppliers and other solution providers
• Actively follow market trends, competitors and  new developments in the market.
• You are a spider in the web for different department

Together with marketing and the sr tech expert, you support building the “pro-active” innovation pipeline on Sweet Treats, that matches the strategic needs of Vandemoortele and customers

• You act as the R&D contact for new innovations towards the management and other stakeholders. 
• You lead short-/ mid-term innovation projects in close collaboration with our research teams, sr tech expert, sensory experts, central and local development center.  
• You lead and coordinate internal projects (eg on complex raw materials, ingredients, process improvement, nutritional and sustainability projects…) for which you monitor performance, recommend schedule changes, cost adjustments or resource additions.

 
You provide support to production sites to create efficiency or improve the quality of existing products or to test and implement innovations. You will be actively involved in new CAPEX investments, building on your extensive expertise, working together with equipment suppliers
 

Building & sharing expertise and reporting

• You build up specific technological and market knowledge via literature, patents, seminars, etc…
• You share your technological and market knowledge with the broader team to enhance new insides.
• You visualize the created added value of the job by developing clear reports

Teamwork:
Our R&D Team’s purpose: You will be part of passionate high performing R&D team, that generates innovative bakery solutions through technological knowledge to create success of our partners and to fulfil consumer needs.
You report to the R&D Director Bakery Products

What’s in for you? 

• You will join our big little family: Our associates are the beating heart of our company – they bring the flavour to our organisation. We cherish each member, prioritising their well-being and supporting their professional journey. 
• We value you as a person: At Vandemoortele we value each one of our associates and recognise their unique contributions to team successes. You will have flexible working hours and the opportunity to work from home 50% of the time. We also invite you to join our sports and wellbeing activities! 
• We care for your future and we support your professional journey: We believe in the power of our associates and the value of their actions and support their career aspirations by offering internal mobility and promotional opportunities. We embrace individual ambitions and entrust our associates to take ownership. 
• We make products for you to love: We are a team of passionate food enthusiasts. In our mission to shape a tasty future we strive to create a wide range of food solutions that connects people, cultures and traditions.

Are you the one we're looking for?

• You hold a Master’s degree or PHD in food chemistry or food technology or bio-engineering or other related fields and you have at least 3 to 5 years of relevant work experience within the food industry. Experiences with (frozen) bakery products are a strong asset.  
• You are very customer focused
• Good knowledge of the customer’s market, players and needs.
• You are strong in analytical thinking skills and you are open-minded in your thinking and acting. 
• You have a mature business personality, you are able to challenge cross functional colleagues and managers.
• You’re able to work in an autonomous way
• You are an ultimate team player
• You are proactive, energetic and dare to challenge the status quo. At the same time, you are pragmatic, problem-solving and looking for initiative. 
• As a food lover, you are passionate by food and food technology.
• You have an extensive external network to be connected on innovations
• You follow a structured way of working with good project management skills
• You have excellent interpersonal and communication skills, written and verbal, in English. Fluency in Dutch and French are a strong plus. A basic knowledge of French is required.
• You are willing to travel 30 % of your time. 
• For this exciting role you will be working at our R&D Centre based in Izegem, Belgium