Do you want to make a delicious difference?
Planet A Foods is for people who want to change the future of food. We’re reinventing how the world produces food ingredients, replacing scarce and unsustainable raw materials with scalable, sustainable, and delicious alternatives. Our first product—a chocolate-like alternative made without cocoa—is just the beginning. Our goal is to build a new global leader in food ingredients.
At Planet A Foods, you’ll become part of a bold, highly motivated, and international team of scientists, engineers, operations experts, and industry specialists who share a common goal: to make a real, measurable positive impact on our planet.
As Lead Process Development & Scale-Up (m/f/d), you’ll be responsible for our core production process. Your mission has two parts: bringing the current process up to target capacity and target costs, and translating the most promising innovations into a design framework that our industrialization team can implement. You’ll serve as the process authority for the CTO, Production, CAPEX, and Procurement, and you’ll bridge the gap between our headquarters and lab in Munich and our production site in Pilsen, Czech Republic. You’ll decide which ideas to pursue and which to discard, and you’ll oversee your process until it passes the on-site performance test.
Together with our experts in Flavor & Analytics and IP & Data, you form our Science Hub and report directly to the Head of R&D (currently our CTO, Sara Marquart).
A Taste of What to Expect
- Overseeing the Core Process: You’ll have full responsibility for our current process, including process descriptions, material and energy balances, critical process parameters, feasibility, and process risks.
- Laying the Groundwork for Decisions: You’ll help shape the strategic roadmap for capacity expansion and COGS optimization and proactively provide the CTO, Production, and Purchasing with the data-driven foundation for informed decisions.
- Managing Process & Governance: You’ll oversee feasibility studies and technology transfers for newly developed processes from start to finish and have clear approval authority for non-standard process changes.
- Scaling what matters: You implement selected concepts through pilot and test centers as well as pilot runs. You define scale-up rules, conduct risk assessments (including ATEX), and develop well-calculated backup concepts.
- Bridge between R&D and Production: You translate breakthroughs from the lab into robust plant specifications and production requirements, reliable technology stress tests, and clear financial models.
The Perfect Recipe of Skills & Experience
- At least 7 years of experience in process engineering or scale-up in the food, chemical, or powder processing industries, including the development of process technology or leading scale-up projects
- Degree in chemistry, process engineering, or food processing engineering with a solid foundation in chemistry
- Proficiency in applying mathematical methods to engineering problems: thermodynamics, heat transfer, particle technology
- Experience with ATEX environments and a clear understanding of how physical scaling effects impact complex basic operations
- Proficiency in mass balances, process descriptions, and techno-economic evaluation (COGS, CAPEX, OPEX)
- Strong execution skills and resilience: You see things through to the end, even when the ramp-up gets bumpy. You act decisively, make structured decisions, and reject ideas that won’t work.
- You bridge the gap between functions and make process realities understandable to R&D, Engineering, Finance, and Production
- Fluent English; knowledge of German or Czech is a plus
A Sweet Package
- Early opportunity to take on responsibility and plenty of creative freedom in a dynamic environment
- Collaboration with a passionate, international team on the innovations of tomorrow
- Work at an exceptional food-tech startup that’s growing rapidly and operates a 24/7 production system with four shifts
- A position where you can help challenge a “trillion-dollar industry”!
- Very attractive compensation and diverse opportunities for professional growth
- Perks that other startups offer too (30 vacation days, delicious lunches, snacks, drinks, gift cards, gym membership...)
- PLUS: Chocolate. Every. Single. Day.
About Us
As an employer that promotes equal opportunity, we are committed to supporting diversity and inclusion, starting with a fair evaluation of all applications. We encourage applicants from all backgrounds and with diverse abilities to apply.