Salary: $90,000 - $115,000 depending on experience
Location: On-Site in Seattle, WA
Headquartered in Seattle, Aqua Star Corp. is a leading global manufacturer, producer, and distributor of quality seafood and culinary food products. We were founded in 1990 by industry experts who continue to lead the business today. We are looking to fill the position as R&D Chef on our Product Development team.
Position Summary:
Initiate, coordinate, and implement product recipes/formulas, concepts, and initiatives on new and existing products using their strong culinary skills. Ensure recipes are aligned with current trends and aligned with various areas of the business such as procurement, quality assurance, production, and marketing.
Accountable for all product development activities related to recipes and concepts, and documentation from ideation to first production approval. Assist in establishing shelf life and food safety standards for new recipes. Collaborate with PD department to ensure new products and recipes are commercialized and implemented in a timely manner.
Key Responsibilities:
- Emphasis on creative development of new food products using strong culinary skills, and work within team format to continuously lead, develop, and support all culinary activities for the company
- Create and formulate new product recipes/formulas, and work with PD team to commercialize recipes to a scale-able production formula
- Document and maintain all formulas in company format in SharePoint
- Complete costing on new formulas, source ingredients for new formulas and can engineer new product formulas to desired price point
- Support the Sales teams on new product presentations – including preparing product samples, information coordination, preparation, and travel for presentations as required
- Validate production processing procedures and critical production control points on new items to ensure product attributes are maintained
- In liaison with QA, approve quality of raw materials and ingredients used in new items
- Qualify new suppliers, ingredients, processes for any new item development
- Assist QA with completion of product specifications and set specification limits using production data
- Ensure product recipes/formulas adhere to corporate brand standards or respective Private Label brand standards
- Run nutritional information for product development using Genesis nutritional program
- Accountable for hands-on preparation of bench top and customer presentation samples
- Validation of consumer cooking information for packaging
- Attend plant trials and first productions as required
- Develop ingredient declarations for new products and document background information accordingly
- Travel to and work with vendors in the development of ingredients and components
Experience & Skills:
- Minimum 8 years' experience in a food processing or research & development capacity
- Seafood or frozen food experience is a plus, but not required
- Must have knowledge and understanding of the functionality of food ingredients
- Must be detailed oriented and proficient in MS Excel, Word, and Outlook
- Strong verbal and written communication skills
Education:
- Bachelor's Degree in Food Science, Nutrition, or related Science; or
- Bachelors or Associate degree in Culinary Arts
- A culinary background is required
Benefits:
- Affordable medical, dental, and vision coverage
- Flexible Spending Account and Health Savings Account
- Life and AD&D Insurance equal to 1 times salary up to $200,000
- 401k with immediate vesting and 4% company match
- Paid Short-Term Disability and Long-Term Disability
- Employee Assistance Programs
- Transportation Reimbursement up to $280/month
- Gym Reimbursement
- Annual Profit Sharing
- Product giveaways
- Stocked snacks and beverages