Food Scientist

General Summary
The Food Scientist leads the development, optimization, and plant scale-up of value-added seafood and vegetable products, including battered, breaded, marinated, and ready-to-cook items. This role works cross-functionally to create products that meet customer requirements and deliver consistent taste, texture, quality, and profitability for King & Prince Seafood. This role supports products from bench-top concept through commercial production by ensuring formulas, processes, and specifications are practical, scalable, and aligned with quality and food safety requirements.

Note: This is an on-site role based in Brunswick, GA . Applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

- Lead new product development activities for value-added seafood and vegetable products, from bench-top concept through commercialization.

- Develop, innovative, value-added products, including battered, breaded, marinated, glazed, and ready-to-cook items.

- Formulate functional batters, breading, marinades, glazes, and flavor systems optimized for frozen storage and customer reheating methods, including oven, air-fryer, and deep-fry applications.

- Research and evaluate new products, ingredient, coating, flavor, and processing technologies that can improve product quality, efficiency, or customer value.

- Develop and maintain product specifications that are accurate, manufacturable, and aligned with customer, quality, and production requirements.

- Lead plant trials and commercial manufacturing line trials to transition new formulations into large-scale frozen production.

- Evaluate ingredient functionality, including starches, hydrocolloids, and phosphates, to improve water-holding capacity, reduce purge loss, and support product quality during frozen distribution.

- Conduct sensory testing, texture analysis, and to evaluate product performance, stability, and quality over time.

- Ensure formulations, raw materials, specifications, and processing steps comply with applicable food safety, quality, allergen labeling, and regulatory requirements, including Seafood HACCP requirements.

- Build customer relationships and provide technical support through product presentations, sales meetings, trade shows, seminars, and customer visits.

- Other duties and projects as assigned.
Requirements

- Bachelor’s degree in food science or a closely related field.

- 3-8 years of product development experience in a food processing environment; seafood, chicken, or value-added protein manufacturing experience strongly preferred.

- Strong understanding of seafood protein functionality, coating systems, freezing technologies, and thawing kinetics; breading and battering experience preferred.

- Working knowledge of FDA Seafood HACCP requirements, Good Manufacturing Practices, labeling regulations, and sanitation protocols for wet and frozen processing environments.

- Ability to define problems, collect and analyze data, establish facts, and draw valid conclusions.

- Strong project management skills, including the ability to manage priorities, timelines, and cross-functional deliverables.

- Proven ability to collaborate cross-functionally with Procurement, Operations, Quality Assurance, and Category Management to meet project milestones.

- Excellent communication and presentation skills, with the ability to explain technical information clearly to internal and external audiences.

- Proficiency with Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word.