Innovation Manager

Company:

Epogee is a food science and lipid chemistry company developing novel structured lipids for the food industry. Our flagship ingredient, EPG® (esterified propoxylated glycerol), is a patented fat alternative with 92% fewer calories than traditional fats. EPG can be used in a wide variety of food applications (e.g., frying and baking, as well as confectionery and snack applications).

The Role:

We're looking for an Innovation Manager to scout new technologies for Medici. This individual will stay up-to-date with the latest innovations in food, ingredients, and adjacent technologies such as nutraceuticals and adjacent biotech platforms. You'll leverage your network in addition to building relationships with the universities, startups, and suppliers behind them. You'll evaluate and vet those technologies on their technical merits, then flesh out the business case for the technology. You'll have the opportunity to work with teams across the organization as you use your scientific and business acumen to evaluate the intersection of practicalities of application fit, cost-in-use, regulatory path, and commercialization with product market fit and consumer demand.

Technology Scouting & Screening

• Build and maintain landscape maps across priority technology domains such as encapsulation, controlled delivery, protein functionality, novel processing, and adjacent pharma and biotech platforms with food applicability
• Source and stay on top of patent literature, academic groups, national labs and tech transfer offices, startup pipelines, SBIR/STTR awardees, VC portfolios, scientific/trade conferences
• Run a stage-gated pipeline against an explicit scoring rubric designed to evaluate, screen and prioritize opportunities quickly

Technical & IP Diligence

• Lead technical diligence: read the primary literature, interrogate the underlying data, and design or commission the confirmatory experiment that separates a real result from an artifact.
• Lead IP diligence alongside outside counsel: patent landscaping, freedom-to-operate posture, claim strength, prosecution history, expiry, and design-around risk.
• Assess manufacturability and cost-in-use at commercial scale, not bench scale.

Business Case & Customer Discovery

• Translate a technology into a defensible commercial case: addressable application space, competitive alternatives, cost-in-use against the incumbent technology, regulatory pathway and timeline, and the capital and time required to reach first revenue.
• Run structured discovery with formulators, brand and R&D teams, co-manufacturers, and distributors to make go/no-go decisions before investing significant time/resources
• Deliver make / buy / partner recommendations on technologies to be evaluated

Partnerships & Deals

• Assist with structuring and evaluating agreements, MTAs, NDAs, joint development agreements, and in- and out-licensing terms alongside legal and commercial leadership.
• Support M&A planning and venture investment diligence: technical and IP workstreams, integration risk, and the technical section of the investment memo.

Requirements

• 5+ years evaluating technologies or businesses in R&D, corporate development, consulting, venture, or a similar role. Advanced degree (MS, PhD, MBA) in a technical or business discipline preferred, however sufficient technical expertise to evaluate and make accurate judgement calls on technology is required.
• Ability to evaluate technical depth to assess a technology on its merits, work through the primary literature and press on the data behind a claim.
• Commercial judgment to understand and prioritize based on application fit, cost-in-use, competitive alternatives, and commercialization alongside understanding consumer trends/behaviors and product/market fit
• Working fluency in IP: you can read a patent, understand what is actually claimed, and know when to escalate to counsel.
• Venture capital, corporate venture, tech transfer, or licensing experience is a plus

Benefits

• This is a full-time, in-office role based in New York City. We work onsite five days a week- when the culture fits, it is fun to be in the office together.

• Salary: $150,000 - $200,000 per year, inclusive of bonus.
• Company equity options.
• 100% covered Health, Vision, Dental Insurance.
• 401(k) with 4% match.
• Additional perks, such as covered gym expenses.
• Substantial and required PTO.
• Travel will be required to assess manufacturing operations.