Food Scientist Product Development & Quality

Key Responsibilities

1. Food Formulation & Product Development

• Develop formulations for everyday foods and preventive nutrition products.
• Work on products such as:
• Atta / flour
• Bread
• Noodles
• Breakfast products
• Staples
• Future functional-food categories
• Develop formulations based on defined nutritional targets such as:
• Protein
• Fibre
• Amino-acid profile
• Digestibility
• Glycemic response
• Fat quality
• Micronutrients
• Identify appropriate food-grade ingredients and functional ingredients for formulations.
• Optimise formulations for taste, texture, mouthfeel, aroma, colour, shelf life and manufacturability.
• Conduct formulation trials and document formulation iterations.
• Work with manufacturing partners to translate laboratory formulations into commercial-scale production.
• Troubleshoot formulation and manufacturing issues.
• Evaluate alternative ingredients where required without compromising nutritional or quality specifications.

2. Raw Material Quality Control

You will establish and maintain technical specifications for every critical raw material.

For each ingredient, you will define parameters such as:

• Identity
• Purity
• Protein content
• Moisture
• Ash
• Fibre
• Microbiological parameters
• Heavy metals
• Pesticide residues, where applicable
• Allergens
• Adulteration parameters
• Physical characteristics
• Particle size, where relevant
• Other ingredient-specific quality parameters

You will also work with suppliers and laboratories to establish appropriate testing protocols.

3. COA Validation

A major responsibility of this role will be to review and technically validate Certificates of Analysis (COAs) received for incoming raw materials.

You will:

• Review COAs against our approved raw-material specifications.
• Verify whether the test parameters, units, methods and acceptance limits are appropriate.
• Check whether the reported values meet our internal specifications.
• Identify incomplete, suspicious or inconsistent COAs.
• Verify testing laboratory details and accreditation where applicable.
• Flag deviations before the material is released for production.
• Maintain a systematic COA approval/rejection process.
• Coordinate with suppliers whenever additional documentation or testing is required.
• Determine when an ingredient requires independent third-party testing rather than relying solely on the supplier's COA.

Important: You will not simply collect COAs. You will be responsible for determining whether the data contained in the COA is technically sufficient to release the material.

3. Incoming Raw Material Quality Check

Work with our manufacturing facility to create an Incoming Raw Material Quality System.

This includes:

Supplier → COA → Documentation Review → Sampling → Testing → Approval → Production

You will establish:

• Raw-material specifications
• Sampling requirements
• Testing frequency
• Acceptance criteria
• Supplier approval criteria
• Batch-release requirements
• Non-conformance procedures
• Retesting procedures
• Rejection procedures

You will coordinate with the manufacturing facility's QC team to ensure these standards are actually followed.

5. Supplier & Manufacturer Quality Management

• Evaluate technical capabilities of ingredient suppliers.
• Participate in supplier qualification.
• Review supplier documentation.
• Coordinate with contract manufacturers on quality requirements.
• Conduct periodic visits to manufacturing facilities.
• Investigate raw-material or finished-product deviations.
• Participate in root-cause analysis and CAPA.
• Ensure formulation specifications are correctly translated into manufacturing SOPs.
• Monitor batch-to-batch consistency.

6. Laboratory & Testing Coordination

Coordinate with external laboratories for:

• Nutritional analysis
• Protein quality testing
• Amino-acid profiling
• Microbiology
• Heavy metals
• Pesticide residues
• Shelf-life studies
• Stability testing
• Contaminant testing
• Other product-specific analytical requirements

You will be expected to understand what needs to be tested, why it needs to be tested, how frequently it should be tested and how to interpret the results.

7. Product Validation & Documentation

Maintain technical documentation for each product, including:

• Master formulation
• Ingredient specifications
• Raw-material specifications
• Supplier documentation
• COAs
• Laboratory reports
• Nutritional analysis
• Product specifications
• Batch specifications
• Stability data
• Product-development trials
• Formulation revisions
• Quality deviations

Build a proper technical dossier for every Doctors Foodstore product.

8. Regulatory & Food Safety

Work with our regulatory/compliance partners to ensure formulations and raw materials are aligned with applicable Indian food regulations.

Knowledge of:

• FSSAI
• GMP
• HACCP
• ISO 22000 / FSMS
• Food labelling requirements
• Food additives and ingredient regulations
• Allergen management
• Food safety documentation
• will be highly valuable.