Product Development Technologist
Compleat Food Group · UK
Our estimate of how close this role sits to decisions about what gets sourced, specified, bought and served. How we score
Why this role matters
Where the work sits relative to real sourcing and menu decisions.
Product recipes and specifications are decided in roles exactly like this one — this developer signs off what actually goes into products sold to the UK's major retailers, across categories including continental meats, egg products and plant-based food. That's a direct lever: someone in this seat can push for higher-welfare ingredient specs, or make the case for shifting formulations toward the plant-based side of the portfolio, when a project brief allows it. It won't feel like advocacy day to day — the job is briefs, budgets and scale-up — but NPD is one of the few places where a food company's product mix genuinely gets rewritten, and building fluency here (customer relationships, benchmarking, cross-functional delivery) is a credible route toward more senior specification or category roles where that influence widens.
About the role
The Compleat Food Group is hiring two Food Product Developers into its NPD team, based at the Barnsley site on a hybrid basis with travel required to Middlesbrough and client sites. The company is a UK food manufacturer with brands including Wall's Pastry, Pork Farms, Wrights, The Real Yorkshire Pudding Co., unearthed, Vadasz, Squeaky Bean, Palace Culture and Harvey & Brockley, and supplies own-label pastry, sweet bakery, party food, olives and antipasti, added-value egg products, continental meats, dips and sauces and plant-based food to major UK retailers and foodservice. The job purpose is to develop new products and adapt existing ones to meet customer and branded briefs, delivering commercial targets and ensuring successful scale-up to production. Core duties include developing products on time and to budget, building ideas and participating in internal and external innovation sessions, acting as first point of contact for customers and building relationships with customer product development teams, working collaboratively with cross-functional teams on feasibility in line with company and customer strategy, leading product presentations, working with teams to solve issues including scalability and sustainability, ensuring product recipes meet appropriate food quality standards alongside commercial targets and brand standards, creating accurate NPD paperwork, and carrying out benchmarking for internal and external presentations. The role also requires demonstrating passion for food and understanding of market and food trends, and travelling to UK manufacturing sites and customers as required. Essential and desirable requirements include supermarket own label and food product development experience, a Food Based Degree (desirable), passion for food, strong customer-facing experience, experience in a retail or FMCG development role, excellent communication skills, strong planning, organisation and project management skills, good analytic and numeracy skills, attention to detail, presentation skills, Microsoft Office skills (Excel, Word, PowerPoint), and a driving licence (essential). The advert lists a range of financial, wellbeing and career development benefits, including salary sacrifice schemes, 33 days' annual leave, retail discounts, a learning management system, mentoring, and employee networks, alongside standard equal-opportunities recruitment commitments.
This is an extract. Read the full advert on the employer's site.
How to position yourself
The language that lands with hiring managers in this kind of role.
Position your interest in this role around commercial delivery and product quality — hitting customer briefs on time, on budget and at scale — while highlighting any experience improving recipes or formulations for sustainability, cost or nutrition reasons, since the advert explicitly asks the team to "solve issues including scalability and sustainability". Build and reference supermarket own-label or FMCG NPD experience and food quality standards knowledge, as these are named as key requirements.
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