R&D Director (Food & Beverage Innovation)

About the role

A leading Asian food and beverage group is looking for a Global R&D Director based in Singapore. This is a senior innovation leadership role combining strong food science and product development expertise with a highly commercial mindset: the successful candidate must understand what consumers want and how to turn an idea into a commercially successful product at scale.

Key responsibilities

• Lead the overall R&D and product innovation strategy across relevant food and beverage categories, identifying opportunities for sustainable commercial growth.
• Build and manage the new product development pipeline from consumer insight and concept creation through formulation, pilot trials, scale-up and commercial launch.
• Translate market trends, consumer behaviour and competitive intelligence into differentiated product concepts with clear commercial potential.
• Partner with Marketing and Commercial teams to evaluate product propositions, pricing, positioning and market potential before committing significant R&D resources.
• Drive product formulation and reformulation, balancing taste, quality, nutrition, shelf life, manufacturing feasibility, ingredient cost and target margin.
• Work with manufacturing and supply chain teams to ensure new concepts can be industrialised and produced consistently at commercial scale.
• Develop a disciplined stage-gate innovation process with clear success metrics covering consumer acceptance, technical feasibility, cost, margin and revenue potential.
• Review the existing product portfolio for renovation, cost optimisation, premiumisation, localisation or rationalisation.
• Identify emerging food technologies, ingredients and processing capabilities, and build relationships with external ingredient suppliers, technology partners, universities and research organisations.
• Lead, coach and develop the R&D organisation, and present innovation strategies, business cases and product recommendations to senior leadership.

Required profile

• Degree or postgraduate qualification in Food Science, Food Technology, Nutrition, Chemical Engineering or a related discipline.
• At least 15 years of experience in food and beverage product R&D, with significant leadership responsibility.
• Strong track record of launching new products with meaningful commercial success.
• Experience managing the full innovation lifecycle from concept through formulation, scale-up, manufacturing and launch.
• Commercially minded, able to evaluate market size, consumer demand, positioning, cost, margin and revenue potential alongside technical feasibility.
• Experience working closely with Marketing, Sales, Consumer Insights, Manufacturing and Supply Chain teams.
• Proven ability to challenge conventional product-development thinking and decide which projects to accelerate, change or stop.

Required skills

• Ingredient functionality, formulation, sensory evaluation, shelf-life optimisation and food manufacturing processes.
• Strong leadership and stakeholder-management capability, able to influence senior business leaders and technical teams.

Relevant exposure to beverages, ready-to-drink products, instant foods, noodles, snacks, sauces, convenience foods or other mass-market F&B products is highly relevant. The position is permanent and leads the regional R&D team in Singapore.