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Position Title: Sr. Director, R&D; - North America Potato

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Position Type: Regular - Full-Time

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Requisition ID: 40986

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McCainers are ambitious, curious, and passionate about creating exceptional work experiences - together. With a customer-first mindset, we make doing business with McCain easy.

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About The Role.

nThe Sr. Director, R&D; – North America Potato is accountable for defining and delivering the North America Potato new product development agenda and a three-year (plus) innovation pipeline. This role partners closely with global innovation platform peers and cross-functional stakeholders to enable value creation across the NA Potato portfolio.n

The Sr. Director leads and coaches a team of scientists and senior scientists/product developers, translating demand-space insights into differentiated product propositions and solutions. Working alongside specification specialists, regulatory affairs, and packaging engineers, this role plays a critical part in enabling McCain’s NA Potato growth ambitions.

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As a strategic R&D; leader, the Sr. Director unlocks consumer-centric design thinking and leverages competitor and market insights to define, design, and execute technical solutions that deliver impactful product experiences and transformational innovation. Through robust, iterative design processes, this role ensures products reflect the latest technological advancements and deliver consumer-relevant attributes that can be scaled across the network.

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Drawing on deep commercial and category strategy expertise, the Sr. Director ensures all product development delivers competitive, customer-winning solutions.



This role is widely recognized for technical leadership that enables successful customer engagements and co-creation initiatives, ensuring McCain’s offerings remain innovative, scalable, and aligned with market and customer needs.

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What You'll Be Doing.

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Innovation Pipeline Management

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- Accountable for identifying, developing, and delivering the NA Potato innovation pipeline to support the North America growth agenda.
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- Collaborate closely with Marketing, Category, Sales, PMO, and S&OP; to ensure portfolio alignment, prioritization, and effective resource deployment.
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Global and Regional Collaboration

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- Maintain strong, two-way communication with the Global Innovation Platform teams to enable effective NA adoption of regionally relevant innovations.
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- Act as a strategic connector between NA requirements and global programs, including the Technology Roadmap, Good Food commitments, and Global Innovation Platforms.
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Product Concept Development

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- Develop and advance a pipeline of early-stage regional concepts and prototypes, translating consumer and market insights into compelling product designs.
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- Partner with Marketing, Consumer Insights, Sensory/UX, and Packaging teams to ensure alignment with defined demand spaces.
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Iterative Prototyping and Design Excellence

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- Lead iterative prototyping to test and refine hypotheses based on consumer, customer, and competitive insights.
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- Direct and coordinate internal and external, multi-disciplinary design and development resources to execute plans effectively.
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Technical Rigor and Compliance

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- Ensure all new products align with Positive Food commitments and regulatory requirements.
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- Apply established scientific and technical methods—including experimental design, prototyping, validation, and commercialization scale-up—to generate high-quality technical data that supports transparent, informed decision-making across technical and non-technical teams.
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Stage-Gate Commercialization

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- Lead concepts from ideation through commercialization using McCain’s stage-gate process.
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- Partner with manufacturing teams, suppliers, and co-manufacturers to execute scale-up and enable consistent production across a broad factory network.
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Team Leadership and Talent Development

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- Build, lead, and coach a high-performing, multi-site team of technicians, scientists, and senior scientists.
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- Hire, onboard, and retain a diverse and high-impact team while leveraging shared resources across regulatory, specification management, sensory, and packaging design.
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Budget and Financial Stewardship

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- Oversee the NA R&D; NPD budget, providing recommendations and justifications for future planning cycles.
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- Apply strong financial acumen to enable cost-effective, value-driven product development.
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Best Practices and Intellectual Property

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- Contribute to intellectual property activities and translate learnings into internal best practices.
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- Share insights and innovations across McCain’s global R&D; network.
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Activ

Apply on Kit Job: kitjob.ca/job/2ecp5r

📌 Sr. Director, R&D - North America Potato - Canada Applicants (Florenceville-Bristol)
🏢 McCain Foods
📍 Florenceville-Bristol