Research and Development Specialist

Role overview

Isha LIFE is looking for a Food Innovation & Development Executive to work on new product creation and improvement across a broad range of food categories. The role is based in Coimbatore and involves hands-on work from lab formulation through pilot runs and commercial handover.

What you will do

• Drive formulation development and optimisation across a wide assortment of products such as energy bars, porridge and dosa mixes, trail mixes, honey-based variants, A2 ghee, laddoos, snacks, chocolates, and RTD/RTÉ products.
• Set up, execute, and record laboratory-to-pilot trials for products including date-sweetened cookies, herbal teas, amla and ginger honey variants, ash-gourd powder, seed crackers, instant sprouted RTÉ items, ragi/cacao RTD, single-origin chocolate, and instant sundal.
• Work closely with co-packers, ingredient vendors, incubation centres, and testing labs to coordinate sample development, process alignment, and delivery timelines.
• Design sensory evaluations using internal panels and limited consumer trials, then translate the findings into specific changes in recipe and process.
• Maintain clean-label standards, support FSSAI compliance, conduct basic shelf-life evaluation, and prepare complete commercial handover files such as formulation sheets, process flow documents, and trial reports.
• Visit plants, co-packers, and farms regularly for trial support, commissioning, and issue resolution on site.

Skills and experience needed

• Practical product development experience across 2 to 3 food segments such as bakery/snacks, traditional mixes, confectionery, beverages, health foods, or dairy.
• Strong grounding in food science, including cereals, millets, fats, sugar alternatives, nuts, seeds, herbs, and functional ingredients.
• Working knowledge of common processing steps such as mixing, roasting, extrusion, baking, milling, dehydration, and filling.
• Ability to plan sound lab trials and convert them into pilot-scale or commercial-scale production.
• Comfort with basic testing and interpretation of results, including moisture, fat, and microbiology checks.
• Experience with clean-label product development, natural sweeteners, and adapting recipes into stable RTÉ, RTS, and RTD formats.
• Familiarity with sensory methods such as hedonic scoring, triangle tests, and benchmarking.
• Good spreadsheet skills, strong documentation habits, and awareness of FSSAI requirements.

Additional information

The role requires frequent travel to manufacturing sites, co-packers, and farms. Interested candidates are asked to send their resume to the hiring contact mentioned in the source.