{"id":3837090,"url":"https://alion.io/job/orbital-kitchens-research-development-director-culinary","title":"Research & Development Director (Culinary)","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":"head","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":5,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-11-05T17:27:01Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-11-05","last_verified_at":"2026-11-10T07:59:24Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":4,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":4},"description":"Position Overview\nThe Director of Research & Development is a culinary innovator, strategic operator, and people leader who runs Orbital Kitchens' R&D function. The Director owns product development from concept through commercialization, delivering products that taste great, hit margin targets, and run consistently at volume across our 20+ brands and production kitchens.\nKey Responsibilities\nR&D Strategy: Set the culinary R&D strategy based on company growth objectives, brand priorities, market opportunities, and operational needs. Build and prioritize an innovation pipeline that maximizes return on R&D resources.\nProduct Development: Lead the development and improvement of menu items, recipes, ingredients, concepts, processes, and technologies. Set gold standards for taste, quality, consistency, scalability, and profitability.\nR&D Process & Commercialization: Own the full product lifecycle, including concept development, recipe testing, food costing, yield and shelf-life testing, stabilization, large-batch validation, tastings and approvals, launch, and post-launch review. Run concurrent projects with clear priorities, timelines, and success criteria.\nTeam Leadership: Build, mentor, and lead a high-performing R&D team. Set clear expectations and accountability while fostering creativity, disciplined experimentation, collaboration, and continuous improvement.\nScaling & Operational Feasibility: Turn concepts into repeatable, production-ready products and systems for a high-volume, multi-brand operation. Validate labor, equipment, storage, capacity, workflow, food safety, and execution complexity before launch.\nCost & Profitability: Partner with Finance, Procurement, Supply Chain, and Operations to manage food cost, yields, waste, sourcing, and margin without compromising quality.\nDocumentation & Handoff: Deliver complete recipes, specs, yields, build sheets, quality standards, and SOPs for every approved product. Lead launches with Operations, Production, Training, and Marketing, then validate results and hand off clear ownership.\nPerformance & Continuous Improvement: Set R&D KPIs and use sales, margin, operational feedback, and launch results to improve the development process.\nKnowledge, Skills & Experience\n5+ years in culinary R&D, product development, or related food-industry leadership, including leading teams and taking products from concept through commercialization.\nStrong culinary foundation and knowledge of food science, recipe development, scaling, shelf life, yields, food costing, production systems, and quality control.\nHigh-volume, multi-unit, commissary, or manufacturing experience strongly preferred.\nBusiness acumen to balance culinary quality with feasibility, cost, and margin.\nExcellent project-management skills across multiple concurrent initiatives.\nStrong leadership, communication, analytical, and cross-functional collaboration skills.\nWorking knowledge of food safety, sanitation, QA, and FDA, USDA, state, and local regulations, plus experience developing or supporting SOPs, SSOPs, and HACCP plans.\nCulinary or food science education and ServSafe, PCQI, or SQF certification preferred.","description_format":"text","description_chars":3161,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":5,"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":4,"expected_fill_days":38,"reasons":["conf:4","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-11-10T06:52:35Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/orbital-kitchens-research-development-director-culinary","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/orbital-kitchens-research-development-director-culinary.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-10T12:12:41Z","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":28376,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-11T00:00:00Z"}},"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-director-culinary"},{"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-director-culinary"},{"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-director-culinary"},{"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-director-culinary\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Forbital-kitchens-research-development-director-culinary"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3837090}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"orbitalkitchens.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3837090},"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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