TECHNICIAN PLANT MEAT STRUCTURING

Would you like to make plant-based meat the standard and eliminate animals from the food chain? Join us!

ABOUT UNILEVER

Unilever is one of the world’s leading suppliers of Food, Home Care, Personal Care and Refreshment products with sales in over 190 countries and reaching 2 billion consumers a day. It has 161,000 employees. Over half (58%) of the company’s footprint is in developing and emerging markets. Unilever has more than 400 brands found in homes around the world, including Knorr, Dove, Hellmann's, Lipton, Wall’s, PG Tips, Ben & Jerry's, Marmite, Unox, Magnum and The Vegetarian Butcher. 

Welcome to R&D, Unilever’s ideas factory. Our purpose is to build brands through benefit-led innovation, unlocked through science and technology. Unilever R&D has built the Hive, a new Global Foods Innovation Centre in Wageningen, the Netherlands. In this way Unilever creates critical mass in expertise areas to ensure that our new technologies ultimately bring breakthrough innovations to the markets that are good for People and Planet. In addition, we aim to evolve our R&D sites into innovation ecosystems to leverage the knowledge and expertise of external partners.

It is Unilever’s ambition to reach 1 billion turnover in the next 5 to 7 years from plant based products of which plant-based meat is a significant part. To achieve that ambition, we are strengthening our technical capability and therefore we are looking for people with specific skills in this area.

We currently have a vacant position of Technician Plant Meat Structuring. The vacancy we are recruiting for is within the Foods Product & Process group in the Science & Technology department, in the Hive. At the end of 2018 Unilever acquired The Vegetarian Butcher, which has the mission to become the biggest butcher in the world by making plant meat the standard. The Vegetarian Butcher aims to provide meat-lovers vegan alternatives without any compromise. The person we are looking for will work on plant meat structuring to make this vision a reality.

OUR TEAM

The Science & Technology (S&T) team in the Foods & Refreshment (F&R) division is an agile team of enthusiastic world-class scientists with a clear purpose:

We are indispensable partners in F&R who deliver competitiveness through science and technology

We unlock the world’s ecosystem to solve problems for today and create inspiring opportunities for tomorrow

We build on each other’s strengths to magnify our impact

We combine key capabilities across the end-to-end spectrum of food science, biotechnology & engineering with unique knowledge on flavour & formulation sciences, all underpinned by digital

modelling capabilities, to deliver differentiating innovations to market that meet consumer needs every day.  

The S&T team has a passion for continuous learning, works according agile principles with a strong can-do mindset.

THE JOB

Develop new plant meat structures by experimenting at lab and pilot plant scale, finding correlations between key parameters of ingredient properties and product characteristics. Next, to develop models to describe these correlations in for example excel models. The focus is on identifying and applying new technologies with the objective to design new plant meat textures with the best possible sensorial, nutritional and sustainability characteristics. Many of these activities will be done with external partners. The design, execution, interpretation and reporting of these R&D activities will be done in innovation teams, working according to agile principles.

WHAT WILL YOU DO?

You will prepare novel plant meat structures, based on non-animal protein sources and blends at either lab or pilot plant scale.

You will analyze these structures with a variety of technologies & report the results to the wider organization

You will then correlate these results in models to link ingredient characteristics with desired product properties.

ALL ABOUT YOU

• Education: an MSc or BSc with experience, in related fields, like Food Technology, Process Engineering, Chemical Engineering

A few years of relevant work experience in similar area is preferred but not necessary

Technical mindset applied to solutions, entrepreneurial mindset & ambition to continuously learn and improve

• Planning and organization skills

• Ability to work in a multi-functional, multi-cultural environment, with good communication skills in English and in (virtual) teams

EXCITED?

Join Unilever and our team! To apply, you must do so online. Please do not forget to upload your CV and a motivation letter.  Your application will be reviewed against our requirements and we will be in touch shortly after the closing date to provide you with an update on the status of your application.

Disclaimer

Equal Opportunity Employer: Unilever is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, or any other basis protected by applicable law, and will not be discriminated against on the basis of disability.