Sr Manager Process Engineer

The Sr Manager Process Engineer leads process design, scale-up, validation, and commercialization across dairy, plant-based, cultured, and adjacent food platforms. The role delivers safe, cost-effective, scalable consumer-preferred solutions and provides technical leadership across R&I, Operations, Quality & Food Safety, Engineering, Procurement, suppliers, and co-manufacturers. 

• Lead process strategy, design, scale-up, validation, and commercialization for complex innovation, renovation, productivity, quality, and capacity programs.

• Apply deep expertise in mixing, thermal and aseptic processing, homogenization, fermentation, filtration, filling, sanitation, controls, and automation.

• Define critical process parameters, operating windows, scale-up rules, control plans, and risk mitigations; lead resolution of high-impact manufacturing issues.

• Lead multiple strategic technical programs and own R&I process-engineering deliverables through stage-gate, including scope, resources, risks, trials, documentation, and recommendations.

• Design and execute pilot and plant trials, analyze results, and communicate decision-ready conclusions to technical, operational, and business leaders.

• Build reusable standards, scale-up playbooks, and lessons learned to improve speed and first-time-right commercialization.

• Apply engineering fundamentals, statistical methods, and plant data to optimize unit operations and distinguish process variation from systemic capability gaps.

• Partner with manufacturing teams to establish sustainable operating standards, monitoring, and corrective actions.

• Define process and user requirements for pilot equipment, including hygienic design, utilities, instrumentation, automation, data collection, and cleanability.  Work with OPS Engineering to ensure industrial equipment meets desired requirements.

• Guide equipment selection and capital projects from concept through commissioning and start-up, ensuring product, process, food-safety, operability, and scale-up requirements are met.

• Ensure process designs and commercialization plans meet GMP, HACCP, sanitary design, validation, regulatory, and internal food-safety requirements.

• Partner with Quality & Food Safety to assess risk, resolve deviations, define validation evidence, and review key process and change-control documentation.

• Mentor technical contributors, deliver training, and build organizational process-engineering capability without direct supervisory responsibility.

• Serve as a senior subject-matter expert; influence cross-functional and global partners; and evaluate suppliers, co-manufacturers, emerging technologies, and digital tools.

• Work spans office, laboratory, pilot plant, and manufacturing environments and requires plant-floor presence, appropriate PPE, and approximately 40–50% travel.

The ideal candidate will bring a combination of education, experience, and skills that enable them to excel in this position. The following qualifications outline what we’re looking for, including both required and preferred criteria:

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in Chemical, Process, Food, Mechanical Engineering, or a related field.

• 10+ years of progressive process-engineering, scale-up, or industrialization experience in food, beverage, CPG, or another regulated hygienic manufacturing environment.

• Demonstrated success scaling processes from bench or pilot to manufacturing and establishing robust operating windows and validation plans.

• Ability to mentor technical talent, lead cross-functional work across projects and sites, and communicate risks and recommendations to senior stakeholders.

• Master’s degree or PhD in engineering, food science, or a related technical discipline.

• Advanced expertise in thermal or aseptic processing, fermentation, filtration, mixing, homogenization, hygienic design, and product-process interactions.

• Lean Six Sigma or equivalent problem-solving expertise, plus experience with capital projects, suppliers, co-manufacturers, or global teams.

• Expert command of engineering fundamentals, scale-up principles, process dynamics, equipment capability, and hygienic manufacturing.

• Strong knowledge of GMP, HACCP, sanitation, thermal validation, process risk, instrumentation, controls, and manufacturing data systems.

• Advanced data analysis and statistical skills, with the ability to integrate formulation, rheology, processing, equipment, packaging, and shelf-life requirements.

• Strong project leadership, prioritization, communication, and influencing skills, with comfort operating hands-on in ambiguous, fast-paced environments.