Sensory Scientist II - Minneapolis, MN - General Mills

The Sensory Scientist II provides strategic product guidance to optimize the total product experience through smart Sensory Design while safeguarding the critical design principles and the job to be done.

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES

• Partner with Consumer & Market Intelligence, Research and Development, Marketing, Packaging, Supply Chain, and other business and product teams to guide the optimization of new products, product improvements, and protect product quality as designed
• Drive projects through appropriate product and packaging consumer and sensory learning plans from optimization to confirmatory testing, inclusive of building foundational product knowledge, protecting product quality, and enhancing consumer understanding.
• Facilitates consumer interactions to grow consumer empathy
• Courageously champion product design and product quality as the sensory representative on business teams
• Collaborate with global team members on global initiatives for the platform
• Apply design of experiments to sensory and consumer testing
• Synthesize qualitative consumer learning and interpret statistical analysis of results of quantitative sensory and consumer testing
• Communicate key findings in a relevant and easy to understand manner and guide business teams to next steps in the product development process

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

• PhD in Food Science with a focus/emphasis in Sensory Science, Psychology, Statistics, or related field (i.e., Behavioral Science, Data Science, Experimental Psychology, Consumer Experience or Human Factors)
• OR Masters degree  AND 2+ years of experience in related position
• Exceptional interpersonal, collaboration, and influence skills with technical and business facing teams
• Ability to manage resources and leverage existing data to effectively lead multiple projects
• Fundamental understanding of applied statistical analysis to design studies and experiments
• Strong sensory science technical skills

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience planning and executing sensory and/or consumer research in partnership with Product Design Teams and/or Consumer Insights.
• Strong technical and analytical skills, and a passion for learning and developing new research methodologies
• Ability to translate strategy into action, using knowledge of current business process & practices and evolving technology & data.
• Strong data science skills with ability to communicate and simplify complex data analysis into actionable, easy to understand insights.
• Experience in computational and predictive modeling.
• Experience in using Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning algorithms to uncover impactful insights from textual data

ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATIONS

• Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the U.S. General Mills will not sponsor applicants for a U.S. work visa.​

We exist to make food the world loves. But we do more than that. Our company is a place that prioritizes being a force for good, a place to expand learning, explore new perspectives and reimagine new possibilities, every day. We look for people who want to bring their best — bold thinkers with big hearts who challenge one other and grow together. Because becoming the undisputed leader in food means surrounding ourselves with people who are hungry for what’s next.