Your Objectives

Agri-Neo’s mission is to help safely feed the world. Globally recognized as one of the top food safety technology companies their vision to accomplish this is to set new food safety standards with their treatments for seeds, grains, nuts, spices, and more foods in the future. Their product lines include Neo-Pure that leverage our proprietary technology of liquid formulas and systems that apply their solutions onto foods in food processing facilities. These solutions control pathogens such as Salmonella and E. coli to ensure the food is safe to eat and to prevent recalls. They have several customers throughout North America, Latin America, and China, including large mainstream food processors that treat food continuously at high throughputs. They are scaling their products at more mainstream customer sites to ensure they do set new food safety standards to help safely feed the world.

What You Will Be Doing

The Director, Sciences reports directly to the CEO as a member of the senior leadership team. Your role will be to lead the expansion of our products for new foods and the continuous improvement of our existing proprietary systems and solutions. You will be directly responsible for our validation process approvals, publications, laboratories, and testing. Additionally, you will be required to support products that are in the market with continuous improvements, validations at customer sites, and tech support linked to microbiology and food quality.

You will lead an established team of lab technicians, and food safety technologists (FST) and lead the stage gate process for launching new products. This is a cross functional responsibility that involves working with Chemistry, Engineering, Operations, Commercial, and Finance. You will work closely with our Science Committee that includes advisors with critical expertise to leverage. You will be the technical representative of the company working with external partners and influencers.

The leader that takes on these responsibilities will need to be process oriented, highly collaborative, highly decisive and be able to prioritize resources. You will have a small group of people on your team to bring up ideas for product improvements. Being open to these ideas and encouraging them, while also being able to decipher which are the best ideas to focus on, will be critical. Developing relationships with regulators, key customers, and the management team, will be essential to your success and will require some travel to the US and internationally. Lastly, developing and supporting your team and holding them accountable, and developing their skills will be important.

SKILLS & EXPERIENCE & EDUCATION

• 5+ years of science related work experience including experience in the food and beverage (or cannabis industry) either with food processors or lab service providers or chemical suppliers to food processors
• Graduate degree in food science, biochemistry, biotechnology, microbiology, or a related field
• Minimum of 2+ years experience in a leadership role managing lab technicians skilled in food science, biochemistry, biology, or microbiology
• Food safety experience is an asset
• Experience as a process authority is an asset
• Ability to manage multiple priorities and timelines in fast paced, lean environment
• Knowledge and experience supporting the stage gate process working cross functionally with Chemistry, Engineers, Operations, Commercial and Finance.
• A passion for launching new food and or food safety products
• Success in working with regulators and external groups to commercialize products
• Flexibility and ability to travel to customers and regulators in the United States and internationally (10-15% of time)
• Strong leadership skills, enjoys coaching a dynamic and driven lab team
• Ability to drive the team to execute at a high level and quickly
• Team player that is highly collaborative with management team members and other functions
• Problem solver who demonstrates strong decision-making abilities, perseverance, and ownership to solve complex problems
• Desire to plan the future, with focus on identifying resources needed to build our capabilities
• Strong desire to have a social impact with your work and building a company for long term success

How To Apply

For consideration, please apply online. As part of our commitment to inclusivity, diversity, equity and accessibility, our goal is a workforce built on respect that reflects the communities we serve. We thank all applicants for their interest in MaxPeople but only those selected for an interview will be contacted.

We are proud to be in compliance with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA), 2005 and the Integrated Accessibility Standards Regulation. We are happy to honor accommodations at any part of the recruitment process and invite you to let us know how we can help.