Product Experience Researcher

at  International Flavors Fragrances

JOB DESCRIPTION

IFF is a global industry leader in flavor and food ingredients. As PX Researchers in the Nourish division, we represent the voice of the consumer within IFF and help to drive sales by implementing research designs and effectively managing resources to ensure we create optimal products people love. Are you passionate about sensory and consumer insights and how they can impact product design, formulation, and development, and create optimal products people love? Are you strategic and insightful while being pragmatic and result oriented? More than anything, are you passionate about the field and want to make a difference? Then this opportunity is for you!
IFF PX Innovation & Portfolio global team is looking for a Product Experience Researcher II for the site in Hilversum, NL. As Product Experience Researcher II in this team, you will be responsible to guide and drive sensory and consumer research activities and projects in alignment with business opportunities and corporate strategies. You will partner closely with the creation and design teams with sensory and consumer insights that are directly relevant for the product design and formulation. You will also partner with the regional PX teams, the portfolio, digital transformation, and commercial teams to ensure global relevance and leverage of the insights.

As a Product Experience Researcher, you will focus on:

• Manage IFF proprietary sensory languages globally, ensuring:
• The continued relevance of sensory descriptors through maintenance and upgrade (including scales and toxicology).
• The global availability of the sensory references through organized sourcing and distribution.
• The global awareness and use of the sensory languages through communication and trainings.
• Be the owner of the sensory description of all raw materials and flavors in the digital systems globally, ensuring data quality and relevance either through the implementation of best practices internally for technical description or through proper sensory profiling of key groups of raw materials / flavors.
• Enable the management of the flavor portfolio globally:
• Leverage the sensory description of flavors to identify opportunities for portfolio harmonization, internally and externally for customers.
• Drive, coordinate, and consolidate all the Best-in-Class initiatives, which aim to guide the creation of consumer-preferred flavors in key flavor tonalities.

TECHNICAL SKILLS:

• Solid knowledge and experience with Sensory descriptive and discrimination testing methods as well as Quantitative consumer testing methods.
• Experience in Moderation of human interactions (with sensory panels, technical panels and consumers).
• Strong statistical skills, especially on Dimensionality reduction, Inferential theories (ANOVA, Chi-square, correlation, regression) , Clustering, as well as experience in analyzing large data sets.

REQUIREMENTS:

• Degree in Sensory Science, Psychology, Neuroscience, Food Science or related area
• Fluent in spoken and written English
• Minimum 5-7 years of experience in sensory research, preferably in the food and beverage industry and ideally in the flavor industry.

Please refer the Job description for details