Senior Process Engineer - Commercialization & Scale-Up

COMPANY 🌱

RYZE was founded in 2019 by Andrée Werner and Rashad Hossain, out of a parents' basement, with a mission to change daily health, starting with the morning routine: a nutrient-dense mushroom coffee delivering clean energy, mental clarity, and immune support. Built on a Direct-to-Consumer foundation with a performance marketing engine, RYZE achieved hockey-stick growth and a community of over 1 million active subscribers.

DTC remains the foundation, but RYZE has expanded into mass retail, quickly becoming the #2 items in Target's overall coffee category and is now executing a multi-channel expansion, with a cross-category launch coming in early 2027. RYZE is uniquely positioned to redefine how people think about daily wellness.

We’re a lean, fast-moving, mission-driven team who believe daily rituals create the foundation for living your greatest life, and we’re just getting started!

WHAT YOU'LL DO 🎯

This role exists to engineer the process side of every formula that moves toward production — translating a bench-top “gold standard” into a repeatable, equipment-specific process that holds up at full manufacturing scale. This person owns how a formula is made: the mixing sequence, shear, time/temperature, blend order, and equipment parameters that make it reproducible on a tumble blender, ribbon blender, or V-blender, and everything in between.

This is a new position, created because our fastest-growing need is process engineering rigor — someone who can take a formula’s process requirements, prove them out through trial and first production, and translate them cleanly onto whatever equipment a given co-manufacturer runs. The ideal person thinks like a process/manufacturing engineer first, comfortable working closely with formulation partners, and grounded enough in plant-floor reality to know what actually happens on the equipment versus on paper.

Process Engineering & Scale-Up (Primary Focus)

• Own the process-engineering translation of new formulas from bench-top “gold standard” samples through plant trials, first production runs, and continuous improvement
• Engage early on new formulations, before they’re finalized, to engineer for manufacturability from the start and flag equipment or process mismatches before they become a rework problem.
• Partner with the formulation team to determine whether a site-specific process standard is warranted when equipment differences make an exact process match to the master gold standard impractical, and document the engineering rationale.
• Build and maintain process documentation (process flows, critical parameters, equipment specs) that lets a formula’s process transfer cleanly between sites.
• Stay attached to a formula’s process through its handoff into steady-state production, acting as the process-continuity link to the SKU and site rather than dropping it once it’s running.
• Partner with New Product Launch teams during launch planning to confirm our manufacturing network has the process and equipment capability to execute the formulation as designed at full scale, flagging capability gaps early enough to address them before launch.
• Maintain a working view of process and equipment capabilities across the manufacturing network, so future formulations can be engineered around real equipment constraints from day one.

Commercialization Support

• Support the commercialization timeline from trial through first production, providing the process-engineering input that keeps a launch on schedule (equipment trials, line trials, capacity/throughput checks).
• Provide process-side technical support to the site-facing quality team, translating process intent into terms that inform day-to-day production troubleshooting.
• Interpret process performance against sensory and quality targets, helping the site-facing team read drift and connect it back to the original process design.
• Flag when a site’s day-to-day practice appears to be drifting from documented process standards, and route it to the site-facing quality owner for follow-up.

Issue Support & Root-Cause Investigation

• Support root-cause investigations when something breaks (an out-of-spec result, a quality deviation, an ingredient or process failure) by bringing process-engineering knowledge and clarity on how the product is designed to run at that specific co-man. This role strengthens the investigation rather than owning the initial response.
• Coordinate with the broader manufacturing coverage team and site-facing quality owners so investigations draw on the right process expertise without depending on any one person’s availability.

Relationship Management

• Build genuine, collaborative relationships with co-manufacturer teams (quality, engineering, and operations) grounded in the mindset that Ryze and the co-man are solving the same process-to-production problem together.
• Represent Ryze’s process and quality standards clearly and directly, including in difficult conversations, while maintaining the trust needed for co-manufacturer to raise issues early rather than hide them.

What Success Looks Like

• New formulas move from gold standard to first production with minimal rework because process and equipment realities were engineered for upfront, not discovered after the fact.
• Process documentation is clear and current enough that any co-man engineer could pick it up and run the formula correctly.
• Co-manufacturer teams treat this person as a technical peer who understands their equipment, not an outside inspector.

PROFESSIONAL QUALIFICATIONS

• 5–7 years of experience in process or manufacturing engineering, formulation scale-up, or a closely related technical role in food, beverage, or nutritional products manufacturing.
• Background in process or manufacturing engineering (food, beverage, or nutritional products), with meaningful exposure to formulation scale-up (bench → pilot → first production); ingredient-supplier or contract-manufacturing experience is a strong plus.
• Strong working knowledge of blending and processing equipment (paddle blenders, V-blenders, ribbon blenders, augers, packaging lines), RTD products and how equipment differences affect a formula’s process.
• Demonstrated ability to build trust-based relationships with manufacturing partners and to have direct, difficult conversations when needed.
• Comfortable with variable travel to assigned manufacturing sites, planned around commercialization and launch milestones rather than as the primary on-call, short-notice responder.

WHAT WE OFFER 🌟

• Competitive compensation aligned with experience and market benchmarks.
• Comprehensive benefits package
• Paid time off and company-observed holidays.
• Opportunities for professional growth and development.
• A collaborative, inclusive, and supportive work environment.
• Access to tools, resources, and training to support success in the role.