COMPANY OVERVIEW:

Balchem Corporation develops, manufactures and markets specialty ingredients that improve and enhance the health and well-being of life on the planet, providing state-of-the-art solutions and the finest quality products for a range of industries worldwide. Our corporate headquarters is located in Montvale, New Jersey and we have a broad network of sales offices, manufacturing sites, and R&D centers, primarily located in the US and Europe. Founded in 1967, Balchem is a publicly traded company (NASDAQ – “BCPC”) with annual revenues over $900 million and a market cap exceeding $4.0 billion. The company consists of three business segments: Human Nutrition & Health; Animal Nutrition & Health; and Specialty Products. Balchem employs over 1,300 people worldwide who are engaged in diverse activities, committed to developing the company into global market leadership positions. To learn more about our dynamic, stable and growing company, visit www.balchem.com

POSITION SUMMARY:

The Senior Scientist Particle Engineering is a member of the R&D Group based in Faribault, MN supporting manufacturing locations in Faribault and Albert Lea with occasional travel to other R&D sites within the network. The position reports to the Agglomeration PD&A Manager and will participate in a wide variety of projects, with an emphasis on developing new microencapsulated, agglomerated, and granulated products and processes for the food, beverage, nutraceutical, and animal nutrition markets. In this role, the candidate will be working at the interface between R&D and several other departments including manufacturing, supply chain, quality, sales, analytical labs, and other R&D groups. They will develop scientific data in the lab, pilot plant, and at commercial scale. This position works closely with the manufacturing plant and will be responsible for the execution of plant trials. The working environment will include office, laboratory, pilot plant, and manufacturing environments, and will require business travel.

The Senior Scientist Particle Engineering will be called on to act as a Project Manager/Technical Project Leader on new product development and support projects. This role is both strategic and tactical in nature and is for someone who enjoys solving a diverse array of challenges and accepts new responsibilities. The scope of work will include managing projects in development and improvement of new and existing full-scale processes and products, conducting lab scale and bench top experiments, characterizing and qualifying new raw materials.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS:

• Responsible for working safely in all situations, follows and enforces all safety policies, demonstrates safe behaviors including use of safety equipment and equipment safeguards, and champions the Balchem safety programs at each site.
• Technical Project Leader for research projects to design, develop and improve new and existing product portfolio simultaneously managing multiple projects. Responsible for the execution of projects from ideation through to commercialization.
• Creatively solve technical problems. Adept at creating experimental designs, executing technical experiments, making detailed observations, analyzing data, recording and interpreting results, and effectively reporting information written and oral.
• Ability to lead cross-functional teams as a Project Manager and deliver results on time and within scope.
• Actively contribute to ideation – responsible for bringing ideas for new products to the team.
• Leads product development efforts in formulation, application, process development, process capability, and specification development.
• Work closely with Sales, Marketing, Manufacturing, Quality, Supply Chain, other R&D teams, and internal and external functional business partners to develop and test product development solutions for new product launches and to troubleshoot issues with existing products and processes.
• Carries out hands-on pilot scale trials and supports pilot plant to include pilot plant operation and writing pilot plant reports.
• Works with manufacturing and quality to make any required changes to equipment and/or processes involved to ready the product for full scale production.
• Participates in scale-up trials from pilot plant to commercial scale equipment being available at non-traditional hours for scale up trials, as needed.
• Troubleshoot production problems relating to raw materials, equipment, and/or processing conditions and documents findings.
• Maintains documentation of all aspects of project work, and other activities sufficiently to enable filing of patents where appropriate and to provide a record for future reference.
• Assists in the preparation of presentations and reports to communicate results to key stakeholders.
• Follows GMP protocols, regulatory requirements, and works to ensure product compliance with regulatory bodies like FDA.
• Be able to travel up to 10-20% of the time.
• Performs other duties as assigned.

REQUIREMENTS

• BS degree in Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Food Science, or related technical field required.
• 7-10 years industrial experience in process or product development and commercialization with emphasis on agglomeration and micro-encapsulation technology preferred.
• Experience with Minitab, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Six Sigma is a plus.
• Knowledge of food and dietary supplement GMPs preferred.
• Demonstrated experience in Project Management in a fast-paced environment.
• Excellent communication, influencing, and problem-solving skills.
• Highly self-motivated individual comfortable working individually while managing multiple tasks and projects efficiently.
• Ability to apply prior learning or scientific principles to new situations.
• Ability to exhibit a collaborative mindset and to apply innovative solutions.
• Proficient with word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications, and be able to easily learn new applications

#IN

Balchem is committed to a workplace culture that values and promotes diversity, inclusion, equal employment opportunities, and a work environment free of harassment and hostility.