layiq

/la·yiq/adjective

worthy; deserving; fitting; suitable.

A role, opportunity, or path that merits attention, time, and pursuit.

R&D Director, Global Dairy Ingredients at Land O'Lakes | LAYIQ

Customer-Facing Product Development & Commercialization
Lead end-to-end B2B product development across dairy-based seasonings and ingredients, dairy protein powders, and GDI commodity ingredients.
Represent R&D as the senior technical partner in strategic customer engagements, co-development sessions, product demonstrations, qualification reviews, and issue resolution.
Ensure technical solutions are scalable, manufacturable, repeatable, compliant, and aligned with customer expectations, product specifications, and business value.
Portfolio Strategy, Prioritization & Capability Roadmaps
Own the GDI product development strategy and roadmap, translating commercial strategy, customer segmentation, and manufacturing realities into clearly prioritized technical work.
Make resource and priority tradeoffs visible; balance urgent customer needs with foundational learning and longer-term capability building.
Build technical roadmaps for high-value dairy proteins, commodity ingredient optimization, dairy-based seasoning systems, and emerging customer applications.
People Leadership, Talent Development & Succession
Lead, coach, and develop managers, scientists, technologists, and technical contributors; set clear expectations for technical rigor, customer responsiveness, and execution discipline.
Create role clarity, decision rights, development plans, and succession plans to build leadership depth and technical bench strength for the GDI platform.
Foster a culture of ownership, collaboration, inclusion, continuous improvement, learning, and disciplined documentation.
Cross-Functional Integration & Technical Sales Support
Partner closely with Sales, Marketing, Strategic Operations, Manufacturing, Quality, Regulatory, Procurement, Finance, and Supply Chain to enable faster decisions and better handoffs from concept to launch.
Support technical selling by translating product functionality, application performance, processing constraints, and customer value into clear messages for technical and non-technical audiences.
Serve as the escalation point for technical risk, prioritization, customer-impacting issues, and commercialization tradeoffs.
External Partnerships, Market Foresight & Continuous Improvement
Maintain awareness of customer, market, competitive, regulatory, and technology trends relevant to B2B dairy ingredients and dairy proteins.
Develop external partnerships with suppliers, universities, co-manufacturers, engineering firms, application labs, and technology providers to accelerate capability building and close technical gaps.
Champion improved tools, templates, data practices, stage-gate discipline, and knowledge capture to increase speed, consistency, and R&D effectiveness.

R&D Director, Global Dairy Ingredients

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