Description
Apply food science, chemistry, microbiology, and engineering to design, formulate, and scale new and improved food and beverage products. Translate consumer and business needs into safe, palatable, nutritious, and compliant offerings by optimizing ingredients, processes, packaging, shelf life, and distribution.
- • Improve composition, flavor, color, texture, nutrition, and convenience using food science principles.
- • Analyze ingredient interactions and product changes during processing and storage.
- • Develop preservation, processing, packaging, and distribution strategies; run pilot plant trials to optimize yield and cost.
- • Write product specifications, formulations, labeling, and sanitary and safety requirements to meet regulations.
- • Present concepts and prototypes to clients and stakeholders; collect feedback to refine products.
- • Support plant trials and first production; audit manufacturing areas for sanitation, safety, quality, and waste control.
- • Identify clean-label alternatives and substitutes for undesirable additives and allergens.
- • Create new product concepts based on consumer insights, trend data, and competitive analysis.
- • Track regulatory changes, ingredient innovations, and scientific literature to guide development.
- • Formulate and iterate prototypes; run sensory and shelf-life tests for flavor, texture, color, nutrition, and compliance.
- • Qualify raw materials for functionality and stability; verify finished goods for safety, quality, and nutrition targets.
- • Collaborate with process engineers, plant operations, flavorists, packaging, QA, procurement, and marketing to solve development issues.
- • Define processing and storage parameters; build quality plans and controls for new products.
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O*NET occupational data (work activities, skills, knowledge).
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This site includes information from O*NET by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA), used under the CC BY 4.0 license. Career Clutch has modified some of this information for student readability. USDOL/ETA has not approved, endorsed, or tested these modifications. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA.
Last reviewed: Jan 2026
