Product Developer
Danone Utrecht
What is required?
- Master's degree in Food Science and Technology
- English
- Understanding process & food chemistry
- Rigorous and pragmatic
- Being able to work with X-functional project teams
What will you get?
- TBC
- 40-hour workweek
- 30 vacation days
- Premium-free pension
- Health insurance contribution
- Remote working or commute allowance
What will you do?
- 20% Organizing and following up pilots
- 25% Recipe formulation in Bestmix / Artemis (internal systems)
- 20% Internal meetings
- 15% Documentation
- 10% Lab analysis
- 5% Answering questions from the business
- 5% Specification of the recipe
This vacancy has been created based on interviews with employees to help you get a realistic preview of the job.
Vacancy
Please note that this is a job description of an existing role, even though ‘vacancy’ may be stated throughout this page. All vacancies can be found on sHaRe.
As a Product Developer at Danone you are responsible for translating nutritional needs into actual products for consumers. This job description focuses on product development in the liquid Infant Milk Formula team, which means that you focus on infant milk formulas. You are part of a multidisciplinary project team for 1 to 3 years; this depends on the innovation or renovation complexity of the project.
First of all, you will formulate the initial recipe, based on the calculation tool. The recipe is also based on regulatory and internal nutritional guidelines. During this phase of the project, optimization is done considering nutritional brief (vitamins, minerals, protein, fat, carbohydrates et cetera).
The next step is testing the recipe during a pilot trial. You determine the performance of the product and process and optimize it afterwards, which can take some time. When the recipe is robust and stable, you scale up to an industrial trial: you often work together with the Product Change Manager (PCM) to make this happen. When the final version of the product has been approved, your focus will be on the final launch of the product. It is important to stay in touch with stakeholders such as UX, Marketing, Quality, Regulatory Affairs, Factory, Process Technology, Medical & Science experts and the Nutrition team.
Furthermore, you have to make sure that you create and check all the official and necessary documents during the development of the product, like recipes and KPI reporting tools. You also have to create and validate official documents for Product Release. Therefore, organizational skills are important and also come in handy when preparing and following up the pilot, redesigning the product, retesting it and analyzing it again.
If you like to work in the pilot/lab as well as behind your laptop, if you enjoy working with X-functional teams without having a routine at work, and if you are looking for a job bringing value to the vulnerable population, such as babies, then this is the job for you.
Working week
On an enjoyable day, I have different internal meetings about the launch of a product. Moreover, I have some time to focus on the preparation of the next pilot trials in Utrecht to test a new protein ingredient.
A less enjoyable day is a full day trying to fix a recipe that cannot be optimized due to some system issues. In addition, there is a last minute request to release an official document earlier.
- 08:00
- 09:00
- 10:00
- 11:00
- 12:00
- 13:00
- 14:00
- 15:00
- 16:00
- 17:00
- 18:00
-
- Lunch
- Trial day
- Trial day
-
- Coffee with the team
- Lunch
- Answering questions from the business
- X-functional project meeting
- Pilot follow-up
- Documentation
-
- Lunch
- Meeting with Factory team
- Meeting Specialized Nutrition team
- Recipe formulation
- Preparation of the next pilot trial
-
- Lunch
- X-functional project meeting
- Lab analysis
- 1-to-1 meeting manager
-
- Coffee with the team
- Lunch
- Technical Team Meeting
- Ingredient sourcing
- Recipe formulation
Firsthand experience
Growth
Danone Nutricia Research can offer you a career where you can choose your own path, with many opportunities to develop yourself. Your growth path is not fixed, which gives you the opportunity to create your own path in Danone based on your development, skills & interests, and the business situation. As inspiration you could think of the following steps when working as a Product Developer:
Working at Danone
At Danone Nutricia Research, science is at the very heart of their nutrition and health commitment. They are the global research and innovation organisation behind Specialized Nutrition, focused on early life nutrition and medical nutrition.
- R & I Specialized Nutrition in Utrecht
- Globally active
- 63% / 37%
- Average age: 35 years
- 700 employees in Utrecht
- More than 100.000 employees worldwide
Colleagues
