Technical Director – Product Development & Commercialization

Location: Etobicoke, Ontario

We are recruiting a Technical Director – Product Development & Commercialization for a large North American CPG manufacturer of household and consumer chemical products.

This is a senior, formulation-led technical leadership role for an accomplished product-development chemist who understands not only how to develop high-performing formulations, but how to successfully take those formulations from the laboratory through scale-up and commercial manufacturing.

This is not a purely administrative R&D; leadership position. The successful candidate will remain technically engaged, personally contributing to complex formulation work, troubleshooting and commercialization while leading and developing a broader technical team.

What You'll Do

- Lead the development and reformulation of laundry detergents, dishwashing products, surface cleaners and other household and consumer chemical products.
- Translate customer requirements, performance targets and cost objectives into commercially viable formulations.
- Apply deep knowledge of surfactants and other functional ingredients, including builders, enzymes, polymers, solvents, rheology modifiers, fragrances and preservatives.
- Personally contribute to complex formulation, experimentation and technical troubleshooting.
- Lead products from laboratory formulation through testing, pilot trials, plant scale-up and full commercial production.
- Establish critical processing parameters including mixing, temperature, shear, order of addition, processing time and finished-product specifications.
- Troubleshoot stability, viscosity, separation, foaming, ingredient interactions,



processing conditions and packaging compatibility.
- Work closely with Operations and Engineering to ensure formulations can be manufactured safely, consistently and economically.
- Identify raw-material and formulation opportunities that reduce cost without compromising performance or quality.
- Serve as a senior technical contact for customers throughout product development and commercialization.
- Partner with Quality and Regulatory on ingredient compliance, product claims, SDS documentation, registrations and technical specifications.
- Lead, mentor and develop product-development chemists and technical laboratory personnel.
- Help shape longer-term product, technology and innovation strategy.

What We're Looking For
- Bachelor's degree in Chemistry, Chemical Engineering or a related scientific discipline. An advanced degree is an asset.
- 10+ years of progressive, hands-on formulation and product-development experience.
- Significant experience developing surfactant-based formulations .
- Strong understanding of raw-material functionality and ingredient interactions.
- Demonstrated experience taking formulations from laboratory development through scale-up and successful commercial manufacturing .
- Experience troubleshooting complex formulation and manufacturing problems.
- Strong understanding of formulation economics, including balancing performance,



raw-material cost and manufacturing feasibility.
- Experience leading and developing chemists, scientists or other technical personnel.
- Experience within chemical manufacturing, CPG, private-label or contract manufacturing environments.
- Working knowledge of Canadian and U.S. regulatory requirements affecting household and consumer chemical products.

Particularly Valuable Experience Candidates with direct experience in one or more of the following areas will be especially relevant:
- Laundry detergent and fabric-care chemistry
- Automatic and manual dishwashing formulations
- Household and institutional cleaning products
- Concentrated cleaning products
- PVA-based unit-dose systems and pods
- Liquid and powder formulations
- Surfactants, builders, enzymes and polymers
- Major-brand or private-label product development
- Contract manufacturing
- Sustainable chemistry and ingredient substitution
- Raw-material and formulation cost optimization

The Successful Candidate You are a technically accomplished formulator who is equally credible in the laboratory, on the manufacturing floor, with a customer's technical team and in discussions with senior leadership.

You understand that the best formulation is not simply the one that performs best in the lab. It must also be stable, scalable, manufacturable, compliant and economically viable.

Success in this role will be measured by your ability to turn chemistry into commercially successful products: accelerating development, achieving reliable scale-up, solving difficult technical problems, improving formulation economics and building a solid technical organization.

📌 Technical Director (Toronto)
🏢 Red Rover Recruitment
📍 Toronto