Director - Development

Kerry is the world's leading taste and nutrition company for the food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries. A career with Kerry offers you an opportunity to shape the future of food while providing you opportunities to explore and grow in a truly global environment. Reporting to the Senior Executive Chef, RD&A, you will play a key role within Kerry's UK & Europe Research, Development & Applications (RD&A) team, collaborating closely with Commercial, Marketing, and RD&A colleagues to bring innovative food solutions to life. This role focuses on developing exciting, trend-led food concepts across categories including meals, soups, sauces, meat, and plant-based applications. You will demonstrate how Kerry's Taste and Nutrition technologies can be combined to create consumer-preferred products that help customers accelerate innovation, improve quality, and deliver greater value. Using your culinary expertise and passion for food, you will transform market insights, emerging trends, and customer needs into commercially relevant concepts that showcase Kerry's industry-leading ingredient portfolio and technology capabilities. Develop innovative food concepts inspired by consumer trends, market insights, customer needs, and Kerry's technology portfolio, including flavours, fermentation, stocks, dairy ingredients, nutrition solutions, marinades, and coatings. Partner with Commercial, Marketing, and RD&A teams to identify growth opportunities and deliver customer-focused innovation. Drive a structured concept-to-development process, working closely with technologists to ensure consistency, quality, and attention to detail. Implement and maintain robust quality and positive release processes across projects. Prepare and deliver engaging customer presentations and demonstrations that showcase Kerry's capabilities while aligning with customer objectives and commercial realities. Leverage culinary expertise to provide valuable food and market insights that influence innovation and business growth. Build strong relationships across Kerry's global culinary network, including the Kerry Craft Collective. Maintain high standards of laboratory, kitchen, and customer-suite housekeeping, ensuring compliance with all health and safety requirements. Formal culinary, food, or chef-related education. Ability to translate ingredient technologies into compelling finished food concepts. A creative and innovative mindset combined with commercial practicality. Proven ability to deliver high-quality outcomes against tight briefs and timelines. Exceptional attention to detail and commitment to quality standards. Strong understanding of kitchen, laboratory, and food safety practices. Genuine passion for food preparation, evaluation, and culinary innovation.