Pet & Product Science Officer

Segment : Royal Canin

Contract : CDI/Permanent

Location : Aimargues, near to Montpellier

As Royal Canin continues its ambition to be the reference in Health Nutrition, maintaining robust scientific evidence and efficiently leveraging existing knowledge are critical to enabling innovation, claim development, and market compliance.

The Pet & Product Science Officer is responsible for managing and amplifying Royal Canin's scientific knowledge assets, ensuring robust claim substantiation, governance of scientific evaluation processes and tools, and delivery of QUEST projects leveraging existing knowledge or consulting subject matter experts as needed.

The role acts as a key interface between Pet & Product Science, Regulatory Affairs, Legal, Digital, Innovation, Marketing and other R&D functions to ensure scientific knowledge is accessible, current, and effectively translated into business value.

What are we looking for ?

• Master’s degree, Veterinary degree, PhD or equivalent scientific qualification in Animal Nutrition, Veterinary Medicine, Animal Science, Biology, Food Science or a related scientific discipline.
• Experience managing cross-functional projects involving multiple stakeholders.
• Demonstrated capability to synthesize complex scientific information into actionable business recommendations.
• Experience in knowledge management, scientific communication, or claim substantiation.
• Experience working with Regulatory Affairs and Legal teams.
• Strong oral and written communication skills
• Experience with digital knowledge management systems and data-driven decision making.
• Fluency in English.

What will be your key responsibilities?

Provide guidance and insights regarding the nutritional and scientific content of development projects (QUEST)

·       Ensure a consistent and rigorous nutritional and scientific approach is leveraged during the development of our innovation projects. Act as a custodian of  nutritional & scientific consistency & knowledge during the entire pre- and post- market launch process.

·       Facilitate efficient decision-making by connecting project teams with the relevant scientific expertise and evidence.

·       Provide scientific evidence for product claims substantiation.  Accountable for referral claims and evaluatioof scientific risk of on pack claims, proposing solutions to secure the business.

·       Balance the level of science requested with business potential and influence to adapt the story for the Product.

Support Claim Substantiation & Scientific Knowledge Management

·       Promote effective capitalization and re-use of existing scientific learnings, studies, publications, scientific conclusions and substantiation dossiers.

·       Build, maintain and continuously improve Royal Canin's knowledge management capability for health and nutrition claim substantiation.

·       Develop and maintain claim substantiation dossiers (CSDs) and associated scientific evidence repositories.

·       Lead claim substantiation data analysis upon business needs, map substantiation gaps and opportunities.

·       Support Global and Local Regulatory Affairs teams in responding to scientific and regulatory challenges.

·       Ensure claims are supported by current, robust and accessible scientific evidence.

·       Ensure documentation supporting product registrations, technical dossiers and scientific challenges remains current and accessible.

Lead Governance Processes for Scientific Evaluation

·       Build, implement and maintain governance processes related to Scientific Conclusions, Claim Substantiation, ProtoClaims, Patent identification, Darewin codification frameworks.

·       Drive continuous improvement of scientific evaluation methodologies and governance standards.

·       Facilitate cross-functional alignment on scientific positioning and claim substantiation decisions.

·       Maintain traceability and transparency of scientific decisions and evidence sources.

·       Provide training, guidance and support to stakeholders on governance processes and best practices.

Manage Patent Box Reporting

·       Coordinate the identification of products linked to patents with relevant R&D teams.

·       Compile and analyze supporting data for Finance to enable Patent Box tax benefits.

Manage Tools, Digital Solutions & Data Capability for PPS

·       Own the business administration and continuous improvement of substantiation and patent management tools including PIU, PatentBox and Darewin.

·       Ensure data quality, governance and long-term sustainability of scientific databases.

·       Identify opportunities for new digital capabilities and analytical tools including Claim Heat Maps, Competitive Claim Benchmarking, Knowledge Discovery Tools and Scientific Evidence Dashboards.

·       Ensure consistency and connectivity between the tools.

·       Partner with Digital teams to define requirements and implement solutions that improve scientific knowledge accessibility and decision-making.

·       Support training, adoption and change management for existing and future tools.

What can you expect from Mars ?

• You will work in a multicultural environment (more than 40 nationalities) and where your dog will be welcomed by more than 100 other Associates’ dogs at the office! 
• You will work in a unique campus, which gathers more than 800 Associates working for: the international HQ, the French subsidiary, two laboratories, a kennel and a cattery with more than 200 cats & dogs, and finally the most important factory of the Royal Canin group 
• A unique and ideal work environment to become the leader in health through nutrition for cats and dogs!
• You will evolve in the heart of an innovative production plant that will challenge you, on a daily basis

Royal Canin's CSR commitments, to build a better world for tomorrow:

• Since 2015, no waste to landfill is made by the 16 Royal Canin factories in the world
• All Royal Canin products manufactured in Europe are ISO 14001 certified from design to factory gate
• Since 2017, Royal Canin has supported the K-DOG program of the Curie Institute, which trains dogs to detect breast cancer via olfaction.