Senior R&D Scientist - Annie's Snacks

As the Sr. Scientist/Engineer for Annie’s Snacks within Meals and Baking Solutions Team, you will be responsible for the execution of new product strategy, concept development, and partnering to drive initiatives forward to enable our Natural & Organic business to win in the marketplace. In this role you will get exposure to a broad range of products and technologies across Annie’s Snacks portfolio with focus on Crackers, Grahams and Salty snacks. Additionally, this role will provide coaching and team leading across Annie’s Snacks. Annie’s joined General Mills in 2014 and plays a key role in advancing our NAR mission of Being a Force for Good through our triple bottom line business model – People, Planet and Profit. In this role, you will have the unique opportunity to leverage your strong technical, influence, and project management skills to support all aspects of the product development cycle (innovation, renovation, commercialization) on a broad range of product categories and a portfolio of projects across the Annie’s brand. You’ll work with consumers to understand the unique needs of our N&O consumer and will partner with cross functional team, External Supply Chain (ESC) facilities to create and commercialize products and to identify and drive efficiency of existing products. The right candidate for this role will leverage strong innovation, technical problem-solving skills, and project leadership with a high bias for action to create and continuously improve existing products and processes. The projects you manage in this role will provide you with technical depth and breadth, as well as strengthen cross-functional partnerships and the ability to demonstrate ambidextrous leadership. Product technologies include rotary molded baked goods, sheeted-baked crackers, extruded salty snacks, fruit shapes and differentiated fruit. In this role you will have the opportunity to develop the ability to influence across organizations, advance technical possibilities, and develop leadership skills as a subject matter expert on a business team. Additionally, this role offers the opportunity to work through others and drive your individual projects forward through the Technical Team Leader model and portfolio management. KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES Build and execute pipeline of innovation and renovation ideas for Annie’s Snacks business in collaboration with internal and external partners Manage and lead multiple technically complex projects: create technical plans, timelines, risk management, and mitigation plans; identify opportunities by challenging formulation and processing assumptions Formulate products in alignment/adherence with Annie’s ingredient and sustainability standards – e.g. non-GMO project, certified organic, gluten free, vegan, regenerative Coach and develop R&D team members on project execution across a portfolio of projects within Annie’s Snacks Collaborate with cross functional partners and key external partners to deliver the plan Complete gPLM, PSA, Eclips, etc. activities MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering, Food Science or related field 5+ years of experience in product/process development Travel (10 – 20%) Ability to manage multiple projects independently Ability to navigate highly matrixed organization Experience influencing pipeline and strategy, strong business acumen Strong acumen in GMI business processes e.g. gPLM, L2W Ability to collaborate in a cross-functional and external environment and provide key product guidance PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS 7+ years of experience in product/process development in ITQ Knowledge of organic product development, organic certification process, non-GMO project Experience working with ESC locations COMPANY OVERVIEW We exist to make food the world loves. But we do more than that. Our company is a place that prioritizes being a force for good, a place to expand learning, explore new perspectives and reimagine new possibilities, every day. We look for people who want to bring their best — bold thinkers with big hearts who challenge one other and grow together. Because becoming the undisputed leader in food means surrounding ourselves with people who are hungry for what’s next.