Are you interested in turning better-for-you ingredients into snacks and meals people actually want to eat again? We are recruiting on behalf of our client, an international food company that has opened a new Research & Development hub in Wageningen to expand its work on plant-based ingredients and functional food products. The team is building out its taste and flavour capability alongside a wider R&D roadmap, with a focus on healthier, more functional food solutions.
Your role in a nutshell:
As Food Technologist for Taste and Flavour, you will run both lab and kitchen-based experiments to understand how flavour behaves and interacts within snack and meal matrices, then use that understanding to develop plant-based, minimally processed, and nutritionally balanced products. The role centres on making better-for-you snacks genuinely enjoyable to eat, drawing on the science of taste compounds and mouthfeel formation, including how to suppress or mask off-notes.
You will also work directly with external partners such as universities, startups, and flavour houses to track new developments and bring solutions to current taste challenges. It is a hands-on, technical role that calls for close collaboration with marketing and production colleagues to bring scalable, high-quality products to market.
Key Responsibilities
Clean-Label Snack & Meal Innovation
- Contribute to flavour component generation and flavour or masking solutions, from early concept through to commercial launch
- Optimise the taste of plant-based, high-protein, and functional snacks, including bars, bites, and convenient meal formats
- Support the development of better-for-you formulations that combine strong taste and mouthfeel with clean-label requirements
- Safeguard sensory appeal throughout the development process
Ingredient Functionality & Sourcing
- Work with natural ingredients to build label-friendly formulations
- Liaise closely with flavour houses to evaluate new developments in line with the R&D roadmap
Consumer Insight & Market Trends
- Work with the consumer insights team to ensure formulations match flavour and health expectations
- Track emerging trends in plant-based, health-focused, and functional snacking
Regulatory Compliance & Labelling
- Ensure formulations meet clean-label claims, nutrition labelling, and relevant food regulations
Qualifications & Skills
- Master's or PhD in Food Science, Food Technology, Nutrition, or a related field
- At least 3 years of experience in food R&D, ideally within plant-based foods
- Strong knowledge of natural flavour component generation
- Experience optimising flavour in plant-based products and masking off-notes
- Experience working with flavour houses
- Familiarity with current flavour and mouthfeel modulation technologies
- Comfortable running sensory evaluations and interpreting the resulting data
- Able to work cross-functionally with teams such as marketing and operations to bring products to market
Preferred
- Experience designing and developing plant-based food products, particularly around flavour compound generation, targeted taste enhancement such as umami or kokumi, and off-note masking
- Experience with clean-label product development
Nice to have
- Experience with functional snacks and meals, such as protein bars, superfood blends, or prebiotic-rich snacks
- Experience coordinating an internal sensory panel
What's On Offer
- Salary range of 65.000 to 95.000 EUR annually, including the 8% holiday allowance, depending on the level of education (Master/PhD degree) and the years of experience
- 25 vacation days per year, on a full-time basis
- Hybrid working: 4 days on-site, 1 day from home
- 1-year contract directly with our client
- The chance to help shape taste and flavour strategy within a growing R&D team
- A multidisciplinary, international working environment
Interested? Apply directly and we are looking forward to speaking with you!