{"id":3837089,"url":"https://alion.io/job/orbital-kitchens-research-development-chef-manager","title":"Research & Development Chef (Manager)","company":{"id":695233,"name":"Orbital Kitchens","domain":"orbitalkitchens.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/orbitalkitchens","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Breezy","truth_index":null},"role":"Hospitality","role_family":"Hospitality","seniority":"middle","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["New York, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":3,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-11-05T17:35:58Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-11-05","last_verified_at":"2026-11-08T21:32:51Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":3,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":3},"description":"Position Overview\nThe Research & Development Manager is a hands-on culinary developer and team lead who runs day-to-day development, testing, and commercialization across Orbital Kitchens' 20+ brands. The Manager delivers products that taste great, hit margin targets, and run consistently at volume. The role is built to grow into Director of R&D as the function scales.\nKey Responsibilities\nProduct Development & Testing: Lead hands-on development of menu items, recipes, ingredients, and processes from concept through approval, including recipe testing, food costing, yield and shelf-life testing, stabilization, large-batch validation, and tastings.\nPipeline & Project Management: Run concurrent R&D projects with clear priorities, timelines, testing requirements, and success criteria. Keep the pipeline moving, flag risks early, and help shape pipeline priorities.\nIdeation & Insights: Use food trends, competitor menus, sales data, and customer feedback to pitch new products and menu improvements.\nTeam Leadership: Lead, train, and develop the R&D kitchen team. Set daily priorities and build a culture of creativity, disciplined experimentation, and clean documentation.\nScaling & Operational Feasibility: Turn concepts into repeatable, production-ready products for a high-volume, multi-brand operation. Test in real production conditions and resolve labor, equipment, storage, capacity, workflow, and food safety issues before launch.\nCost & Profitability: Build accurate costing for every product and work with Procurement, Supply Chain, and Finance to hit food cost, yield, waste, and margin targets.\nDocumentation & Launch: Write complete recipes, specs, yields, build sheets, and SOPs for every approved product. Execute launches with Operations, Production, Training, and Marketing, including kitchen training and post-launch troubleshooting.\nPerformance & Continuous Improvement: Track product and launch KPIs, including sales, margin, quality, and on-time launches, and turn results and operational feedback into product and process improvements.\nKnowledge, Skills & Experience\n3+ years in culinary R&D, product development, or senior culinary roles, including taking products from concept to launch.\nExperience leading small teams or projects, with the drive to grow into a Director role.\nStrong culinary foundation and working knowledge of food science, recipe development, scaling, shelf life, yields, and food costing.\nHigh-volume, multi-unit, commissary, or manufacturing experience is strongly preferred.\nBusiness sense to balance culinary quality with feasibility, cost, and margin.\nStrong project-management, documentation, and communication skills.\nWorking knowledge of food safety, sanitation, QA, and HACCP, plus experience writing or supporting SOPs.\nCulinary or food science education and ServSafe certification preferred; PCQI or SQF a plus.","description_format":"text","description_chars":2874,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":3,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Delivery","Catering & Food Services"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-11-05T21:23:21Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":86,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.86,"p_room":1,"age_days":2,"expected_fill_days":38,"reasons":["conf:0","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-11-08T05:47:12Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/orbital-kitchens-research-development-chef-manager","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/orbital-kitchens-research-development-chef-manager.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-09T00:09:47Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":404,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-10T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":695233},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=695233"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Forbital-kitchens-research-development-chef-manager"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":2,"usd":0.2},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Forbital-kitchens-research-development-chef-manager"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Forbital-kitchens-research-development-chef-manager"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/orbital-kitchens-research-development-chef-manager\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Forbital-kitchens-research-development-chef-manager"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3837089}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"orbitalkitchens.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3837089},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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