Product & Package Assurance Strategy Principal Scientist, R&D – Consumer Experience (CX) ​

Job description

​​Align executives on benchmarking program vision, scope, decision uses, product selection, and annual operating cadence across business units. ​Stand up enterprise governance: intake, prioritization, decision rights, and escalation paths; drive stakeholder alignment on test plans. ​Build and maintain enterprise dashboards and reporting that communicate progress, success criteria, and implications for leadership. ​Automate core program operations (ex: financial pulls, portfolio views, priority identification) in partnership with

Finance/Analytics/Tech. ​Lead annual product status update with cross-functional inputs to revisit and get a pulse on current product & pack performance, formulation updates, & in-market dynamics (with Ops, Nutrition, Regulatory, etc.) ​Develop and embed quarterly tracking system to ensure action items are visible and prioritized as projects. ​Create the communication strategy and rhythms (LT updates, cross-BU forums, standard readout formats) that reinforce adoption and make the program “sticky” ​Drive socialization and training within & outside R&D to embed common language, adoption, and expectations for the benchmarking program. ​Connect across business units to ensure consistent enterprise rollout, transparency, and comparability of program outputs. ​Track program health (adoption, timeliness, stakeholder satisfaction) and drive corrective actions to improve engagement & actionable outputs.​ ​​Bachelor's degree minimum (Consumer

Behavior/Psychology, Marketing Research, Engineering, Food Science, Human Factors, Industrial Design, or related STEM field). ​Minimum of 6+ years (BS), 5+ years (MS) or 4+ years (PhD) in consumer/product research, consumer experience, or applied insights supporting product development and commercialization—CPG or food & beverage strongly preferred—with demonstrated progression as a technical authority across multiple brands/platforms and vendor ecosystems. ​Proven executive alignment and stakeholder management (VP+), with clear judgment on decision rights and escalation. ​Strong program operating discipline: governance, dashboards, KPIs, cadence design, change management, financial competency. ​Strategic thinker, with demonstrated ability to translate complex information into crisp leadership communications and decisions. ​Recognized expertise across CX research methods (qualitative and quantitative), including end-to-end study design, instrument development, analysis planning, synthesis, and storytelling ​Proven experience leading complex, cross-functional programs with multiple stakeholders, and delivery milestones ​Bias toward standardization and process improvement; able to simplify ambiguity into clear plans and ownership. ​Ability to influence without authority across technical and commercial teams; comfortable aligning competing priorities under time pressure. ​Demonstrated capability building: coaching, technical training, and establishing best practices/standards in a matrixed organization. ​Ability to travel up to 10% of the time.​