R&D Technical Commercialization Director

Job Description

Job Description

Sunny Sky Products is a leading B2B beverage solutions provider serving convenience, foodservice, enterprise, specialty, and healthcare markets. With a diverse portfolio across Hot, Cold, Frozen, and Beverage Enhancer categories, we serve customers through owned and licensed brands including Dr. Smoothie, Upouria, El Nino, Hershey, Sour Patch Kids, and Jolly Rancher.

Our manufacturing spans multiple processes and facilities — hot-fill (Fullerton, CA), pasteurized and frozen juice (Frostproof, FL and Chicago, IL), low-acid aseptic (Douglasville, PA), and dry blend (Tinley Park, IL and Houston, TX). This breadth of process technology is central to the technical demands of this role.

 

POSITION OVERVIEW

The Director of R&D Technical Commercialization is the critical bridge between Sunny Sky's innovation pipeline and its commercial execution engine. This role exists to close the gap between bench science and market-ready products — ensuring that what R&D develops reaches customers on time, on spec, and producible at scale in the plant that will actually run it.

The role requires someone equally fluent in food science and in commercial conversations — comfortable reviewing a formulation spec and validating its thermal process in the morning, and presenting a launch-readiness assessment to the commercial leadership team in the afternoon. Critically, this person is expected to know how our formulas are actually produced — the real time, temperature, and equipment conditions at each plant — and to design and validate against those conditions.

 

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Technical & Process Rigor

• Process-matched formulation. Ensure every formulation is designed and validated against the actual production process and conditions it will run on — hot-fill, pasteurization, low-acid aseptic, or dry blend — including verified time and temperature parameters at the specific plant.
• Ingredient stability. Verify that raw materials and flavor systems are specified to withstand their intended process (e.g., heat-stable vs. solvent/alcohol-based flavor systems under sustained hot-fill exposure). Disqualify ingredients that degrade under the real thermal load.
• Analytical discipline. Establish and enforce use of titratable acidity (TA), pH, and Brix as standard, measured design targets for all new product development and competitive benchmarking/matching.
• Specification integrity. Drive a program to tighten legacy and new quality specs so that product made at the high and low ends of a pH/Brix (and TA) range is sensorially consistent — eliminating specs so wide they yield two different-tasting products.
• Process authority & food safety. Partner with QA and operations on scheduled processes, acidified-food and low-acid aseptic requirements, and shelf-life validation; ensure formulations are documented against approved process parameters.

Science-to-Commercialization Bridge

• Own the handoff from R&D lab to commercial launch — formulation finalization through scale-up, shelf-life validation, regulatory sign-off, and first production run.
• Serve as the primary point of contact between R&D and Sales, Marketing, Operations, and Supply Chain on all active commercialization projects.
• Maintain and enforce a stage-gate commercialization process: track project status, flag risks early, and proactively escalate bottlenecks and emerging product issues to the VP R&D and CCO — such issues should surface from R&D, not reach leadership by other routes.
• Translate technical R&D outputs (specs, test results, process parameters) into commercial-ready language for internal stakeholders and customer-facing conversations.

Project Portfolio & Pipeline Management

• Own the active commercialization-stage R&D portfolio — currently 55+ open projects
• Prioritize projects in alignment with commercial channel needs (C-Store, Foodservice, Healthcare, DSD) and REFILL revenue targets.
• Hold Cross-Functional Teams accountable to Milestone dates.

Existing Product Optimization

• Lead systematic review of existing recipes, formulations, and production processes to identify cost reduction, margin improvement, and performance/quality optimization opportunities.
• Collaborate with Operations and Supply Chain on COGS initiatives — reformulations, ingredient substitutions, process efficiency — without compromising product quality or customer spec.
• Manage sugar/color reduction and label-change programs; ensure regulatory and customer-spec compliance across the active portfolio.
• Champion a continuous-improvement culture: post-launch reviews, lessons learned, specification discipline, and lab-to-plant knowledge transfer.

Lab Operations & Team Leadership

• Provide day-to-day operational leadership for the R&D labs (dotted-line initially; solid-line over time).
• Develop and mentor the team in the disciplines above. Actively train product scientists and technicians in TA/pH/Brix discipline, process-matched formulation, ingredient stability, and proactive issue escalation — building bench strength, not just managing tasks.
• Maintain lab quality standards, compliance protocols, and equipment readiness; serve as technical mentor and escalation point across SSP lab locations.

Customer & Commercial Interface

• Support Sales and Marketing in customer-facing product development — new product requests, customization specs, and technical questions from key accounts.
• Participate in key customer meetings, distributor summits, and trade-show product showcases where technical depth is a differentiator.
• Partner with Category Management and Marketing on white-space analysis and innovation pipeline priorities for the next 12–24 months.

 

SUCCESS METRICS (12–24 MONTHS)

• Commercialization velocity — reduction in average time from formulation finalization to first commercial shipment.
• Project on-time delivery — >85% of active commercialization projects hitting committed milestones.
• Cost optimization — measurable COGS improvement from reformulation and process-optimization initiatives.
• Specification & analytical discipline — TA/pH/Brix targets defined and measured on 100% of new products; legacy specs reviewed and tightened to ensure sensory consistency across the full range.
• Process-matched launches — zero launches with ingredient/process mismatches (e.g., heat-unstable inputs in hot-fill); formulations validated against actual plant time/temp conditions.
• Pipeline coverage — R&D pipeline remains aligned with commercial revenue targets; no critical launch gaps.

 

CANDIDATE PROFILE

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years in food and beverage R&D, with at least 4 years in commercialization, application science, or technical project management.
• Hands-on thermal-process expertise across two or more of SSP's processes — hot-fill, pasteurization, low-acid aseptic, and/or dry blend — with a working command of the time/temperature parameters each requires and their impact on ingredients and shelf life.
• Demonstrated analytical fundamentals: routine use of titratable acidity (TA), pH, and Brix in product design and competitive matching, and the ability to set meaningful, defensible specification ranges.
• Ingredient and flavor-chemistry knowledge sufficient to specify systems that survive the intended process (heat, time, fill conditions) and to diagnose stability failures.
• Working knowledge of food-safety/process-authority requirements — acidified foods, low-acid aseptic (e.g., FDA 21 CFR 113/114), scheduled processes — and shelf-life validation protocols.
• Beverage formulation knowledge across hot, cold, frozen, and/or dispensed categories, plus manufacturing scale-up experience.
• Demonstrated experience managing multi-project portfolios with commercial deadlines and cross-functional accountability.
• Proven ability to translate technical language into commercial terms for Sales, Marketing, and executive audiences.
• Regulatory experience (FDA, nutrition labeling, allergen compliance).

Education

• Required: Bachelor's degree in Food Science (or Food Chemistry/Chemical Engineering with demonstrated food/beverage formulation experience).
• Strongly preferred: Master's degree in Food Science or related discipline. Advanced theoretical depth is valued, but applied, action-oriented manufacturing and commercialization experience takes priority over purely academic/research backgrounds.

Preferred Qualifications

• Background in B2B beverage or foodservice CPG — familiarity with broadline distributor commercialization cycles, operator spec requirements, or convenience-channel product standards.
• Experience managing a small lab team or leading application scientists.
• Familiarity with stage-gate development and project management tools (Smartsheet, Asana, or equivalent).
• Exposure to cost-optimization and reformulation programs tied to COGS improvement.

 

LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES

• Technical Depth — formulation and process knowledge deep enough to earn the trust of lab scientists and the VP R&D, and to catch problems after they reach the plant or the customer.
• Commercial Acumen — understands the revenue implications of R&D decisions; connects product development to business outcomes.
• Project Discipline — manages complexity across many concurrent workstreams without dropping critical details.
• Cross-Functional Influence — builds credibility with Sales, Marketing, Operations, and customers without direct authority.
• Communication — crisp, confident communicator; writes and presents clearly to executives and technical audiences alike.
• Ownership & Escalation — surfaces issues early and proactively; treats 'leadership found out after R&D did' as a failure to prevent.

 

TRAVEL, WORKSTYLE & COMPENSATION

• Travel: ~20–30% (customer meetings, plant visits for scale-up, distributor technical presentations, trade shows).
• Location: Houston, TX, lab-based (relocation support available). Limited remote flexibility given lab leadership responsibilities.
• Compensation: competitive base commensurate with experience; annual bonus tied to project delivery and commercialization milestones; comprehensive benefits.