Head of R&D Nutraceutical/Food Product Development

Head of R&D – Nutraceutical/Food Product Development

Location: Hyderabad (in-office)

Function: R&D & Product Development

Reports to: Founders

Earthful is a plant-based nutrition brand for women's health, backed by Fireside Ventures and V3 Ventures. Our product pipeline is the engine behind the brand — this role owns it end to end, from the phytochemistry that makes a formulation work to the team that ships it, launch after launch.

Role Overview

This role owns Earthful's product innovation pipeline leading the R&D team through active plant/food ingredient and formulation, basic analytical knowledge, stability testing, and production-ready handoff for 3+ new nutraceutical/wellness products a month. You'll lead and grow a team of formulation scientists, build the project management discipline that keeps multiple launches moving in parallel, and give leadership regular, honest visibility into the pipeline. This is a hands-on technical leadership role you'll be expected to go deep on the science as well as run the team and the process. This role should have strong knowledge on botanicals/vitamins/minerals/amino acids/proteins and their formulating dosage forms along with strong food regulatory knowledge.

What You'll Own

New Product Development & Launch Velocity

• Stay current on botanicals/vitamins/minerals/amino acids/proteins and category trends to keep the innovation pipeline forward-looking, not only reactive to a fixed roadmap

• Own end-to-end delivery of 3+ product launches per month — spanning net-new formulations, variants, raw material changes, and form-factor changes

• Lead ingredient and botanical formulation research for new and reformulated products

• Develop and refine trial formulations through to production-ready specs

• Run stability testing and ensure every formulation is genuinely production-ready before handoff

• Ensure every launch meets quality, cost, and regulatory requirements

Team Leadership

• Lead, mentor, and allocate work across the R&D team

• Keep multiple concurrent formulation projects moving in parallel without bottlenecking on any one person

• Build the team's technical depth in phytochemistry and formulation science through hands-on mentorship

• Hire and develop R&D talent as the team and pipeline scale

R&D Project & Pipeline Management

• Build and maintain a rigorous project management system — timelines, milestones, vendor/ingredient dependencies, risk tracking — across all simultaneous product workstreams

• Report pipeline status and roadmap to leadership on a regular cadence

• Flag risks (ingredient sourcing delays, formulation setbacks, regulatory blockers) before they threaten launch timelines

Cross-Functional

• Coordinate directly with the Regulatory & Compliance team on new product FSSAI classification and claims substantiation — timed to land ahead of each launch, not after

• Coordinate with Procurement on new ingredient sourcing, cost feasibility, and vendor lead times during formulation, not after a recipe is locked

• Maintain formulation documentation and knowledge retention so know-how doesn't live only in one person's head

• Track R&D spend against approved projects and flag overruns early

• Ensure proprietary formulations and novel phytochemical combinations are properly documented to protect Earthful's IP, not just for operational continuity

• Coordinate with external/third-party labs for specialized testing (potency, heavy metals, extended stability) where in-house capability doesn't cover it

What We're Looking For

Education

• PhD in Pharmacy, Pharmacognosy, Food Science, or a related life-sciences field strongly preferred

• Candidates with an M.Tech/M.Pharm and substantial, multi-year hands-on R&D industry experience will also be considered in lieu of a PhD

Experience

• 6+ years of post-PhD (or equivalent, for the M.Tech track) R&D/formulation experience in nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, or a related consumer health industry

• At least 2+ years directly managing or leading a team — this is not a first-time people-management role

• Proven track record of taking products from ingredient/phytochemical research through to production-ready launch, in an industry setting, not purely academic research

• Experience building or running a project management system across multiple concurrent workstreams

• Comfortable coordinating with regulatory, supply chain, and manufacturing functions to get products to market on time