Director, Functional & Nutrition

Role Overview

This role plays a critical part in enabling global food and beverage innovation by defining ingredient functionality, product performance, and analytical strategies that drive sustainable business growth. The Director will lead a team of scientists responsible for building and advancing analytical capabilities that support ingredient and product development across functional-focused categories, including juices, dairy, plant‑based proteins, peptides, collagens, minerals, vitamins, and antioxidants etc.

The position provides leadership for scientific teams and laboratory operations while serving as the technical experts for complex, multi‑category analytical initiatives. The Director will partner closely with the FIRA function, specifically, the Functional Research, A Application & Ingredient Delivery team, and GDI technical functions to translate advanced science into practical, real‑world product solutions.

In addition, this role represents the company externally through engagement with professional societies, academic institutions, government agencies, and industry groups to help establish standards, monitor emerging trends, and strengthen analytical and scientific capabilities.

U.S. citizen or permanent resident is required.

• Serve as an enterprise level analytical chemistry authority, independently leading complex, multi-category and multi‑project R&D initiatives with high technical and business risk.

• Establish and advance global analytical strategies for functional and nutritional ingredients and product characterization across R&D, commercialization, and continuity programs.

• Lead translational research by converting advanced analytical data and ingredient/property insights into scalable, value‑creating product and process solutions.

• Devel op, validate, and deploy advanced analytical methodologies that enable innovation, commercialization, quality assurance, and intellectual property protection.

• Provide technical governance and escalation leadership for complex ingredient and product challenges, leveraging both established and emerging analytical technologies.

• Enable proof‑of‑concept, product qualification, and commercialization analytics, ensuring scientific rigor and decision‑ready outputs.

• Lead and develop high performing scientific team and laboratory operations, fostering a culture of technical excellence, innovation, and continuous learning.

• Establish and lead the Global Functional Analytical Network across internal and external partners (RtE, GDI, QSE, SRA, ASL, OUs, CPS, bottlers, suppliers), ensuring test method alignment, data integrity, and capability consistency.

• Build and sustain analytical capability through structured training, mentoring, and succession planning.

• Apply disciplined project and portfolio management practices to prioritize resources, manage risk, and deliver outcomes aligned with enterprise objectives.

• Connect analytical science to enterprise business strategy, commercialization priorities, and brand protection objectives.

• Provide analytical leadership for IMCR initiatives by identifying, managing, and resolving ingredient and product related risks to protect product integrity and business continuity.

• Influence innovation pipelines and portfolio decisions through data driven insights and technical foresight.

• Inform and influence OPEX and CAPEX investment decisions by developing capability roadmaps, business cases, and long‑term analytical infrastructure strategies.

• Monitor and assess emerging regulatory, ingredient, and packaging trends, translating implications into proactive business and R&D actions.

• Represent the company as a recognized scientific leader through active engagement with professional societies, academia, government agencies, and industry consortia.

• Contribute to the development of external standards, best practices, and regulatory guidance relevant to analytical chemistry and ingredient science.

• Monitor and anticipate emerging…