Company
Our client is an established Irish food ingredients business supplying dry and functional ingredient solutions to customers across meat, bakery, and snacking applications, alongside broader savoury and functional ingredient solutions. The business is customer-focused, technically driven, and operates to high quality and food safety standards, with strong partnerships across leading global ingredient manufacturers.
With a solid footprint in Ireland and growing activity beyond the domestic market, the company places a clear emphasis on innovation, technical support, and sustainable product development aligned with evolving consumer and regulatory demands.
Sustainability and responsible sourcing form an important part of the company's long-term strategy, with innovation and product development aligned to evolving environmental, regulatory, and customer expectations.
The Opportunity
This is a senior New Product Development leadership role, reporting directly to the Managing Director/CEO, with responsibility for defining and delivering the company's innovation and product development strategy.
The role has been created to strengthen and formalise the NPD function as the business continues to expand its product offering and customer base. The successful candidate will take ownership of the full NPD lifecycle, working closely with customers, commercial teams, and suppliers, while leading and developing an internal team of food technologists.
It is a hands-on role combining technical depth, people leadership, and commercial awareness, with significant influence on future portfolio direction.
The role will involve close collaboration with a network of leading international ingredient suppliers, providing access to advanced raw materials, technical insight, and global best practice to support innovation and customer solutions.
Responsibilities
The New Product Development Manager will lead end-to-end development of ingredient blends and functional solutions across multiple food sectors, ensuring concepts are translated into scalable, compliant, and commercially viable products.
* Leading all stages of the NPD cycle from concept through to commercial launch across meat, bakery, and snacking applications.
* Developing functional ingredient and seasoning solutions for cured, fresh, and comminuted meat products, with a focus on flavour, texture, yield, and process performance.
* Creating bakery blends that improve texture, shelf life, and nutritional positioning, including clean-label and fortified concepts.
* Formulating seasoning systems, coatings, and functional solutions for savoury snack products aligned with consumer trends such as healthier snacking and protein enrichment.
* Managing competitor benchmarking and recipe matching activities where required.
* Acting as a senior technical and commercial partner to customers, working closely with sales teams to interpret briefs, develop tailored solutions, and support successful customer adoption and scale-up.
* Leading, mentoring, and developing a team of food technologists and scientists, fostering a structured and collaborative innovation culture.
* Managing multiple NPD projects simultaneously, controlling timelines, priorities, and resource allocation.
* Ensuring strong culinary understanding and application relevance across all developed products.
* Providing technical support internally and externally where appropriate.
* Ensuring compliance with relevant Irish and EU food legislation, including additives, ingredient usage, claims, and labelling.
Candidate Requirements
* Degree qualified in Food Science, Food Technology, or a related discipline, postgraduate qualifications advantageous.
* 10+ years' experience in New Product Development within the food ingredients sector.
* Proven experience developing ingredient solutions for at least two of the following sectors: meat, bakery, snacking.
* Strong technical understanding of ingredient functionality and food manufacturing processes.
* Demonstrated experience leading and developing NPD teams.
* Experience building and executing structured NPD or stage-gate processes.
* Strong organisational, communication, and stakeholder-management skills.
* Practical experience with lab work, pilot trials, and factory scale-up highly desirable.
Remuneration
An attractive senior-level remuneration package is on offer, comprising a competitive base salary in the region of €70,000–€80,000, together with a performance-related bonus and benefits package.
For candidates bringing exceptional technical depth, leadership capability, and relevant sector experience, there is flexibility beyond this range, reflecting the seniority and strategic importance of the role.
If you're interested, please don't hesitate to reach out to us at for further detail. To apply, kindly submit your CV and cover letter in Word format, outlining your qualifications and relevant experience.