Senior Scientist – Dough

Pizza Hut is looking for a highly driven Senior Food Scientist to support product innovation, formulation, and continuous improvement initiatives across a dynamic portfolio of food products – with a primary focus on dough. This role is ideal for someone passionate about food science, product development, and innovation within a fast-paced, franchise driven, QSR environment. The selected candidate will collaborate globally and cross-functionally with supply chain, quality, procurement, operations and commercial teams to develop and optimize products that align with consumer experience, quality and cost.

• Lead product development and reformulation initiatives from concept through commercialization.
• Develop and optimize formulations, ingredients, and manufacturing processes to improve product quality, consistency, shelf life, cost efficiency, and to improve overall product experience to consumer.
• Conduct bench trials, plant trials, sensory evaluations, and product validations.
• Partner with cross-functional teams including Quality Assurance, Operations, Supply Chain, and Marketing to ensure successful product launches and continuous improvement.
• Analyze product performance, market trends, and competitor products to identify innovation opportunities.
• Support scale-up activities and ensure products are manufacturable within operational capabilities.
• Maintain accurate documentation related to formulations, specifications, testing, and process validations.
• Collaborate with suppliers to evaluate ingredients, troubleshoot challenges, and identify alternative solutions when needed.
• Ensure compliance with food safety, regulatory, and quality standards throughout all stages of development.
• Manage project timelines and communicate progress effectively with key stakeholders.

EDUCATION:   

Bachelor’s degree in Food Science, Food Engineering, Chemistry or related field – with a preferred concentration in wheat/grains/bakery science. 

EXPERIENCE: (and other critical competencies): 

• 5+ years of experience in product development, R&D, or food manufacturing environments
• Experience within large scale global QSR or CPG environments
• Experience working with fresh and frozen doughs a plus
• Strong understanding of food formulation, ingredient functionality, food processing and quality systems
• Exposure to process optimization, commercialization and sensory science and ability to proactively and positively interface with various cross functional and technical teams
• Ability to flawlessly execute bench work
• Must be proactive, reliable and self-motivated
• Passion for food innovation and emerging industry trends
• Ability to manage priority tasks with little supervision
• Must possess excellent verbal and written communication and collaboration skills
• Ability to apply initiative and creativity to problem solving
• Strong project management, analytical, and problem-solving skills
• Must be well organized, capture work details and learning and highlight any unexpected results
• Flexibility to work various hours and travel up to 30% as required

 

Key Challenges:

• Ability to manage a wide variety of products across key ingredient categories – primarily Dough, but could extend to other ingredient categories - Cheese, Sauce, Proteins, Vegetables
• Ability to manage multiple projects across the globe to support different regional teams of the workgroup, manage time and expectations for group needs. Effectively communicate conflict of requests. 

• Be able to manage, prioritize, and maintain strong working relationships across different functions and geographies

   

Salary Range: $99,200 to $116,700 annually + bonus eligibility. This is the expected salary range for this position. Ultimately, in determining pay, we'll consider the successful candidate’s location, experience, and other job-related factors.