Senior Research Manager, Biotransformation Platform

Have a passion for the biotechnology and being a driving force in our pursuit of advancing the boundaries of biotransformation?  Ingredion is looking for a Senior Manager, Biotransformation to play a pivotal role in guiding the Biotransformation Platform and overseeing the team and its diverse activities. You will manage key development and commercialization initiatives that involve fostering strategic relationships with external collaborators. Become part of our team and be at the forefront of innovation, where your expertise will be a driving force in our pursuit of advancing the boundaries of biotransformation.

Core Responsibilities:

• Lead the biotransformation function and team, building and elevating capability, developing team members, and driving strategy and connectivity to stakeholder functions for delivering winning solutions for our customers.
• Identify capability gaps and future needs and execute a plan to develop and grow the team to meet the organization’s future needs. Elevate capabilities of the team to create a sustainable competitive advantage for Ingredion.
• Foster a culture of growth within the Biotransformation team by effectively allocating resources and identifying operational opportunities.
• Ensure budgetary discipline of your cost center, oversee internal resource distribution, and efficiently allocate equipment and machinery time to support team objectives.
• Cross-functionally support Ingredion’s Innovation Strategy, lead the execution of project roadmaps and monitor progress through structured stage-gate processes to ensure successful project outcomes.
• Be a key leader to liase with other critical functions, such as Chemistry, Analytical, and Process Innovation, in addition to IP and Regulatory Affairs teams to build a balanced research portfolio that provides for both near term customer needs as well as mid to long term disruptive solution discovery.
• Coordinate in-house activities related to protein and strain engineering, gene expression, protein purification, and functional assays, as well as and lab-scale fermentation experiments.
• Develop the necessary internal and external ECO-SYSTEM models and partnerships to successfully implement and execute our Biotransformation strategy. Partner with Open Innovation & other functions to identify new technologies and collaborations to drive speed and impact for our customers.
• Lead the biotransformation team in key diligence activities while evaluating potential partners, and to support activities of our Venture Arm.
• Build an active, well aligned biotransformation community of subject matter experts, to firmly establish Ingredion as an external thought leader, including active presence at key synthetic biology conferences and congresses.
• Implement Design of Experiments (DoE), maintain quality control, and conduct preliminary economic feasibility modeling to optimize processes. Supervise comprehensive record-keeping.
• Ensure team adherence to policies and procedures, including safety, HR, intellectual property (IP), procurement, finance, budgeting, expense control, capex, and infrastructure maintenance.

Qualifications:

• PhD degree in a relevant field, coupled with more than 5 years of managerial experience, preferably in food ingredient biotechnology or a related domain in industry.
• Profound knowledge of modern molecular biology and enzyme engineering techniques, gene expression, bioinformatics, strain engineering, and methods for optimizing protein expression.
• In-depth understanding of metabolic engineering, biochemistry, microbial physiology, genetics, and fermentation processes.
• Proven expertise in project management, with a focus on customer-facing development and commercialization projects, and the ability to conduct thorough technoeconomic feasibility analyses.
• Demonstrated experience leading teams including cross functional teams and initiatives.
• Demonstrated experience in elevating the message while interacting with executive leadership
• Exceptional at gathering, recording and interpreting complex and ambiguous experimental data
• Strong business acumen and awareness of key financial drivers / economic conditions of the industry.
• Creative thinker and problem solver with ability to proactively inspire change. Can act with agility to adapt, grow, and elevate the team’s capabilities.
• Demonstrated experience in data management, with digital and emerging /AI technologies experience a plus.

Ingredion provides accommodations to job applicants with disabilities throughout the hiring process. If a job applicant requires an accommodation during the application process or through the selection process, we will work with the applicant to meet the job applicant's accommodation needs. 

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Relocation Available:

Yes, Within Country