Senior Scientist

This role is an exciting opportunity to join MARS Pet Nutrition Research & Development team as a Senior Scientist in Consumer Products Research.  This role is on the Consumer Technical Insights team within R&D and executes product-centric consumer research, then translates the resulting data into competitive innovation and product design strategies for Mars Pet Nutrition North America (PNNA). 

This position will work across R&D, Insights, and Marketing to deliver superior product experiences by ensuring the pet parent voice is embedded into our product designs and executions.  The ideal candidate will be passionate about all things concerning consumer experience, having navigated their career to become a product-centric consumer research expert.  They will be responsible for understanding consumers’ product/packaging needs, translating them into measurable technical requirements, and enabling action to drive business impact.

This is the perfect opportunity for someone with a professional, self-starting, can-do mentality, who likes to lead.

What are we looking for?

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree in Science (Food Science, Chemistry, Animal/Nutritional, etc.) or Engineering (Chemical, Biochemical, Food, etc.).

• 6+ years of experience in R&D/consumer research/manufacturing.  Includes previous experience in a strong technical leadership role, such as product development or engineering.

• A candidate that demonstrates key strengths in consumer empathy, innovation management, strategic agility, business acumen, and a drive for results.

• Must have demonstrated experience in qualitative and quantitative consumer product research methods, as well as expertise in translating learnings into measurable technical requirements, and actionable plans & strategies.  Must be adept at bridging technical data and consumer criteria.

• Strong team orientation and ability to lead projects effectively across regions and with cross functional partners - must possess excellent interpersonal skills.

• Must possess the ability to communicate effectively with technical and non-technical team members as it relates back to the business, leading actionable strategies to ensure we pursue consumer-centric product design by orchestrating across all disciplines. 

• Experience in consumer research in both Upstream/Front End and Product Development/Qualification/Launch

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience coaching others in product-focused consumer research

• Pet Food Industry experience

• Experienced in sensory research techniques and analysis

• Strong background in statistics applied to consumer and sensory data

What will be your key responsibilities?

• Advocate for Pet and Pet Parent Needs:  You will be a research-driven advocate for the pets and pet parents that we serve.  Lifelong relationships with consumers are hard to earn and easy to lose. You will consistently seek to understand their needs and will satisfy them through leveraging technical thinking skills to deliver winning innovation and outstanding usage experiences.

• Translate Consumer Needs: Understand consumers’ needs and lead translation of consumers’ ‘what’s needed’ to technical requirements, guided by research and understanding of our products and nutrition.

• Research Management: Lead end to end research using both quantitative and qualitative consumer methods.  This will include working with internal stakeholders to define the problem to be solved, creating a learning plan, designing studies, selecting vendors, creating questionnaires, moderating interviews, analyzing and interpreting findings and influencing through findings.  You will be accountable for CTI research deliverables in technical project reviews.

• Consumer Technical Insights (CTI) Leadership: Define and guide CTI methods and activities for consumer understanding, product development and project qualification, ensuring tool adoption and quality consistency. Provide R&D leadership in consumer and product understanding to peers and cross functional partners (global and regional) to embed capabilities that ensure consumer-centricity of our propositions.

• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work closely with the Insights team, other R&D disciplines, and global teams, fostering partnerships across departments to drive success.  This will require the ability to prioritize relationships, to translate technical learnings into actionable reports, and to be adaptable in achieving prioritized business goals.

• Culture: This candidate will embrace and live the Mars culture by leading with The Five Principles.

Mars does not sponsor visas for this role.

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