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- Employment
- full time
Employer job description
From Neogen's posting. “We” and “our” refer to the employer.
It's fun to work in a company where people truly believe in what they are doing!
Role Summary
The Senior Specialist, Innovation plays a critical role in advancing Neogen’s pipeline of high‑impact innovations across Food Safety and Animal Health. This individual translates unmet customer needs into validated concepts and scalable solutions, applying disciplined innovation methodologies to reduce risk, accelerate learning, and increase the probability of commercial and technical success. The role operates at the intersection of science, technology, customer insight, and business strategy.
Senior Specialist, Innovation
Food Safety & Animal Health
About the Role
The Senior Specialist, Innovation plays a critical role in advancing Neogen’s pipeline of high-impact innovations across Food Safety and Animal Health. This individual translates unmet customer needs into validated concepts and scalable solutions, applying disciplined innovation methodologies to reduce risk, accelerate learning, and increase the probability of commercial and technical success.
The role operates at the intersection of science, technology, customer insight, and business strategy and partners extensively across R&D, Product Management, Commercial, Regulatory, Quality, Operations, and digital teams.
Key Responsibilities
- Opportunity Identification & Need Definition
- Lead structured discovery efforts to uncover unmet needs across food and animal safety laboratories, manufacturing environments, farms, and veterinary settings
- Plan, conduct, and synthesize voice-of-customer research, field observations, and stakeholder interviews to identify customer pain points and jobs to be done
- Translate qualitative and quantitative insights into clearly articulated need statements with defined users, use contexts, and measurable success criteria
- Assess unmet needs against strategic fit, customer value, regulatory constraints, and Neogen’s core capabilities to support portfolio prioritization
- Develop early value hypotheses, adoption assumptions, and problem framing to guide downstream innovation activities
- Concept Creation & De-Risking
- Partner with cross-functional teams to generate, evaluate, and refine solution concepts spanning physical products, assays, instruments, digital tools, workflows, and service models
- Collaborate with R&D, Engineering, Data Science, Quality, Regulatory, and Commercial teams to explore technical feasibility and differentiation
- Build and test early concepts through experiments, prototypes, pilots, and customer feedback loops to reduce technical, usability, and market risk
- Define use cases, workflows, and system-level concepts that integrate hardware, consumables, software, and data
- Support intellectual property strategy by contributing to invention disclosures and freedom-to-operate discussions
- Innovation Readiness & Implementation Support
- Prepare concepts for progression through Neogen’s innovation governance process by clearly documenting desirability, feasibility, and viability evidence
- Partner with Product Management, Operations, Quality, and Regulatory teams to support scale-up, validation, and launch readiness
- Identify risks related to adoption, workflow disruption, training burden, or regulatory approval and recommend mitigation strategies
- Ensure customer value propositions are clear, evidence-based, and aligned with real-world usage and purchasing drivers
- Support the transition from innovation into development or commercialization while preserving the original customer intent
- Cross-Functional Collaboration & Influence
- Serve as a connector across Innovation, R&D, Commercial, Regulatory, Quality, Operations, and other functions to promote alignment and shared understanding
- Plan and facilitate structured innovation workshops, ideation sessions, and decision reviews
- Lead through influence by clearly communicating insights, trade-offs, and recommendations to senior stakeholders
- Serve as a trusted thought partner to scientific and technical teams, helping frame problems before solutions are pursued
- Portfolio & Strategic Contribution
Preferred Qualifications
- Advanced degree in Science, Engineering, Business, Design, or a related field
- Experience in food safety, animal health, diagnostics, life sciences, contract or central laboratories, agriculture, veterinary health, or another regulated technical market
- Experience with product development, commercialization, portfolio management, or stage-gate/governance processes
- Experience with digital solutions, data-enabled workflows, software-enabled products, automation, LIMS/connectivity, or digital transformation
- Experience developing solutions that integrate hardware, consumables, software, and data
- Experience supporting intellectual property activities, including invention disclosures or freedom-to-operate discussions
What Will Help You Succeed
- Strong customer orientation and curiosity
- Ability to work through ambiguity and bring structure to complex problems
- Strong analytical, critical-thinking, and problem-solving skills
- Ability to translate scientific and technical information into clear business and customer insights
- Strong facilitation, communication, and stakeholder-management skills
- Ability to influence without direct authority
- Strong collaboration skills across technical and non-technical functions
- Ability to balance customer needs, technical feasibility, business value, and risk
- Strong organizational skills and ability to manage multiple priorities simultaneously
- Impact at Neogen
- Increase the quality and clarity of opportunities entering Neogen’s innovation pipeline
- Reduce downstream development risk by validating customer needs and concepts early
- Accelerate the delivery of differentiated solutions that improve food safety, animal health, and customer productivity
- Strengthen Neogen’s reputation as a science-driven, customer-focused innovation leader
Why Neogen
At Neogen we believe that taking care of our employees allows them to do their best work. When you join our team, you'll enjoy competitive benefits and the opportunity to make a meaningful difference every day.
Benefits include:
- Benefits starting on Day One – Medical, dental, and vision coverage begin on your first day of employment.
- 401(k) with company match – Invest in your future with retirement savings and company contributions.
- Paid Time Off (PTO) – Enjoy generous paid time off so you can rest, recharge, and spend time with those who matter most.
- Career Growth Opportunities – We are committed to promoting from within and providing the tools, training, and support to help you grow your career.
- Meaningful Work – Be part of a team whose work has a real impact on our customers, communities, and the world around us.
- Collaborative Culture – Join a team that values innovation, respect, teamwork, and continuous improvement.
- Come Be Part of a Mission That Matters
- At Neogen, our mission is to protect the world’s food supply. From inside the farm gate to our dinner plates, our products and solutions help protect people, animals, and the global food supply.
- Joining Neogen means becoming part of a global organization where your ideas, expertise, and curiosity can help shape the next generation of food safety and animal health solutions.
- Come build your future with us while making a difference every day.
- #ApplyNow
- Come Be Part Of A Mission that Matters!
- From inside the farm gate to our dinner plates, Neogen protects the world’s food supply. Through a variety of animal healthcare products, to food safety solutions for dangerous bacteria, allergens, toxins, drug residues and much more, Neogen is there — and you can be too.
About this listing
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