Job Description

Description

This opportunity may be your “golden ticket”!

While Willy Wonka’s World of Chocolate is not located in Wisconsin, Denali Ingredients is, and we make all those scrumptious goodies found in your favorite ice cream flavor. Each day, we make fudge and caramel swirls, cookie dough, brownies and more. We ship to business customers across the US and Canada, spreading deliciousness nationwide.

Denali is a growing ingredient supplier. We believe in fast-paced fun, continually developing new products for today’s dynamic consumer preferences. We stay well-connected to the industry we serve through our R&D, sales, and marketing efforts. Denali brings innovation forward to customers, and we collaboratively innovate with our customers for new custom products.

To stay relevant in the world of change, we are committed to investments in our facilities, equipment, engineering advancements, and in our employees. While products are our focus, our passion is for our Denali team members, as they define who we are. Driving this passion is our company’s guiding principles that express our purpose, culture, mission, and vision for our team members and customers.

Summary

The Food Scientist role supports Denali’s vision to become the “go to” ingredient supplier for our customers for innovative products and solutions. Responsibilities will include hands-on product development, commercial scale-ups, ingredient evaluations that meet the functional, flavor, texture, and cost needs of customers. This position requires that a person be self-driven, can multi-task, accurately conduct formulation calculations and generate documentation for those formulations, be efficient in it project work, and maintain project information in an organized manner.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

This list of duties and responsibilities is not all inclusive and may be expanded to include other duties and responsibilities as management may deem necessary.

1. Actively demonstrate and ensure workplace safety. Drive behaviors that result in zero accidents or injuries. Independently manage project work in accordance to internal and external customers’ requirements and time lines.
2. Manage and investigate new ingredients and alternate vendors of existing ingredients that may be used in the development of inclusion systems.
3. Develop or duplicate various products and concepts for new and existing customers. These products and concepts will include both ingredients and finished consumer product prototypes.
4. Develop and maintain all project work, formulations, labeling, specifications, and determine and perform appropriate analytical tests for each item.
5. Prepare written reports on projects as required.
6. Record and keep current project and technical information in appropriate databases.
7. Follow projects from laboratory bench level through pilot lab production including supporting writing formula work instructions and supporting the production facilities during scale-up.
8. Collaborate with Quality and Production to troubleshoot and solve technical production issues.
9. Collaborate with sales and customers to provide technical support for Denali-developed ingredients and customer manufactured products.
10. Travel as appropriate.
11. Other duties as required

Requirements

Ensure Workplace Safety: 

Responsible for actively demonstrating behaviors that result in zero accidents and injuries. Ensure no priority is placed above safety of oneself or of any other company employee.  

Qualifications

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform the essential job function satisfactorily. Additionally, they must fulfill essential job function in a consistent state of alertness and safe manner. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Education and/or Experience

• Bachelor or master’s degree in food science or other biological science; a minimum 5 to 7 years of related experience is preferred.
•   Experience with confectionery ingredients, frozen dessert mix formulations, baked items, cultured dairy products, dairy based beverages, non-dairy based beverages, sauces, and compound coatings. 
• Exposure to working with dairy plant or pilot equipment for processing the applications listed above.

Language and Other Skills

• Fluent in oral and written English
• Ability to work with Denali manufacturing, customers, and food consumers
• Ability to communicate effectively and appropriately with customers, vendors and other employees of the organization with and without assistance.
• Strong organizational skills and ability to prioritize while maintaining attention to detail.
• Ability to work as a member of a diverse, cross-functional teams.
• Abilities to work in Microsoft suite (Power Point, Excel, Word).
• Ability to read and interpret documents such as safety rules, production schedules, purchase orders, maintenance instructions, and procedure manuals. 
• Demonstrated ability to learn new software such as formula development software and production ERP software.

Reasoning Ability

• Self-initiative, planning skills, and abilities a must.
• Self-motivated, resourceful, creative, teachable.
• Ability to multi-task and manage time.
• Ability to solve practical problems and deal with a variety of concrete variables in situations where only limited standardization exists.
• Ability to interpret a variety of specifications and information furnished in written, oral, diagrammatic, or schedule form.

Mathematical Skills

• Ability to add, subtract, multiply, and divide in all units of measure, using whole numbers, common fractions, and decimals.
• Ability to compute rate, ratio, and percent.

Supervisory Responsibilities

• No supervisory responsibilities.

Physical Demands

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is frequently required to stand, walk, and talk or hear. The employee is occasionally required to sit and use hands to finger, handle, or touch objects, tools, or controls. The employee must occasionally lift and/or move up to 55 pounds, carrying boxes, materials, and product. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, color vision, and the ability to adjust focus.

The employee must be able to work with and around all major allergens (milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and sesame) including sensory analysis.

Work Environment

The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Denali Ingredients is an equal opportunity employer without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.  We do not discriminate against any employee or applicant and believe in fairness and providing a level playing field for all. We foster a culture that thrives on diverse perspectives and contributions to ignite creativity and innovation to fuel our business and enhance the employee and customer experience.

Denali Ingredients is in New Berlin, Wisconsin. We are customer-centric, fun and engaging.  Beyond making ice cream treats tastier, Denali provides a fast-paced stimulating international environment, which will stretch your abilities and channel your talents. We also offer competitive compensation, industry-leading benefits, training, mentoring and growth opportunities. Join a team that makes the world a sweeter place!

The above statements reflect the general details necessary to describe the principle functions of the occupation described and shall not be construed as a detailed description of all the work requirements that may be inherent in the occupation.