Company Overview:

Vital Proteins is an emerging, dynamic brand consisting of a team of passionate individuals who believe whole-food-based nutrition is essential for overall health, fitness and wellbeing. Our team, where job titles and hierarchy are meaningless, is comprised of intelligent and innovative talent who work collaboratively to ensure creativity, success, and global growth. Vital Proteins seeks to develop and support the right people, with the right chemistry, who continually ask questions, and in turn will develop and tactically execute good ideas. We are looking for individuals to help us think smarter and put a lot of ideas on the table in a short amount of time. Building a great company is our goal. Quality individuals and getting the team right is our business plan.

Role:

We are looking for candidates with at least 5 years of experience driving the development and commercialization of packaging and material systems within innovation and renovation frameworks.  

• Successful candidates will have experience in the following types of activities:
• delivering inspirational structural solutions for innovation projects
• driving continuous improvement to optimize filling and packaging line performance and packaging quality

This role reports to the Director of Supply Chain and is based out of our West Loop office with frequent travel to our Franklin Park location.

What you will be responsible for:

• Drives creative structural packaging development, as part of Innovation and Renovation projects and processes to support the Vital Proteins brand.
• Leverages technical experience, R&D and external industry insights to develop, implement, and execute creative packaging development activities (e.g. bench top, pilot plant, and internal/external operations) to achieve project goals and deadlines to delight the consumer.
• Drives technical matter with packaging suppliers. Participates in the selection of packaging material and equipment suppliers. Responsible for maintaining vendor and industry relationships to keep abreast of current trends and to ascertain future trends.
• Develop, coordinate and execute line trials at Plants and co-packers to confirm that quality attributes and performance metrics are achieved
• Developer and guardian of system standards, ensure compliance to specified requirements for packaging materials, finished pack quality, and to standard packaging line parameters
• The Packaging Engineer works closely with Marketing, R&D, Operations,Finance, Quality Assurance, Supply Chain and Design to adequately understand and meet internal customer needs and requirements.

Who you are:

• BS Packaging Science Degree or related technical discipline
• 5 + years experience preferred in packaging or related field of work
• Interpersonal communication skills, written and verbal communication, organizational skills, project management skills must all be strong.
• Must be capable of working in a fast-paced, team environment with minimal direct supervision and the ability to adhere to aggressive deadlines
• Ability to manage across multiple projects
• Prior CPG experience
• Knowledge of packaging sustainability, and trends within the industry
• Strong data analysis skills to drive understanding and insights in packaging qualifications
• Ability to travel up to 40% of time to manufacturing sites, co-packers, or warehouses as projects demand