Health Science Technical Leader

Job Description

Job Description:

Health Science Technical Leader T3-II

There is a need for innovation to deliver more value to the business to secure our growth target. Science is a crucial enabler to deliver differentiated impactful solutions.

This role will work across the Petcare ecosystem and externally to translate and accelerate the best science platforms to fuel our business growth, with a clear focus on fostering collaboration with Waltham, MARI, and Royal Canin. The job holder will identify lead science opportunities both internally and externally (suppliers, scientific literature), inspire the organisation behind its potential and ensure effective translation into pipeline and projects. The Health Science Technical Leader should have an excellent understanding of the validity and robustness of the science underpinning claims made by competition and how Mars benchmarks against those. The job holder is accountable for devising a strategy for the need states within their responsibility, ensuring that the science needed to underpin relevant propositions, claims and communications is robust and of a high standard.

The job holder will have specific need state focus areas (e.g. digestion and immunity) and is responsible for fueling implementation of scientific insights intentionally across all formats (dry, wet, supplements, and beyond).

This will require significant technical depth and organization and networking capability to forge collaborations across the business and external partners.

What are we looking for?

• PhD, or DVM / Master's degree with equivalent experience in nutrition, healthcare, biological or related field.

Essential:

• Significant experience leveraging science (e.g. publications, internal reports, trial results) to deploy for business benefit e.g. product innovations or claims.

• Significant experience to lead and manage projects and programmes, including clinical trials.

• Proven ability to build strong collaborative relationships, internally and externally, and work in multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural teams

Desirable:

• Experience in working with SRA/Legal teams to develop claims support documentation.

• Experience with knowledge management systems & database structures

Other

• Fluent in English

What will be your key responsibilities?

The job holder will be responsible for delivering solutions, underpinned by science, implementable in Pet Nutrition, and contribute positively to the Pet Nutrition Scientific Image.

The Health Science Technical Leader defines and translates science invention into high quality impactful innovations, that solve pet & pet parent pain points. The job holder will need to be highly proficient in science, animal health, a strong communicator and feel comfortable at the interface of science and demand.

They will identify the lead scientific capabilities and longer-term science research programs that can step change the value we give to pets and pet parents, inspire the organization with the potential, working with Waltham, MARI and external partners and ensure the effective translation of science into solutions suitable for Pet Nutrition.

This role requires a strong scientist that can translate science into opportunities that create distinctive value propositions for our brands, as well as highly collaborative nature - connecting and working with partners in and outside our organization.

​General:

• Lead territories can be adapted to skills but could be in the need states of gut health, immunity, and start of life, or digitalisation of knowledge.

• Develop into an authority and credible owner of the lead territories to ensure deployment of relevant insights for maximum business benefit, and be able to provide expert consultation to other teams in the business on topics related to need states within responsibility.

• Responsible for developing a strategic science roadmap for lead territories and the allocated budget to deliver against this science roadmap. Accountable for the projects and initiatives within the roadmap delivered through the Health Science Senior Scientist.

• Responsible for driving the unlocking of novel claim wording and claim territories leveraging existing science (internal and external e.g. supplier insights & literature),competitive insights, and insights from other sectors (e.g. human nutrition).

• Accountable for ensuring novel science projects are proactively and suitably designed to deliver desired claim wording.

• Responsible for alignment of this strategy with the Care Innovation and Waltham Teams as two priority interfaces, to drive and support growth of our global portfolio of products and services.

• Inspire and influence the innovation agenda by illustrating how science can deliver more impactful innovations that address pet & pet parent pain points.

• If Lead Territories include OGSM priorities, represent the H&WST in the need state discussions influencing and inspiring the agenda, and driving initiatives using abovementioned science roadmaps.

Practical:

• Build a deep understanding of existing knowledge in need states within responsibility.

• Maintain a broad perspective of the Mars Petcare Ecosystem innovation & research portfolio for the health areas within responsibility, and a broad perspective of all S&T roadmaps in order to identify opportunities to drive synergies and maximise value.

• Build competitive benchmarks and internal benchmarks of science underpinning propositions to drive inspiration (e.g. claims) and cascading across brands.

• Assess with Waltham, Care Innovation, and SRA teams business potential for new products & claims in the health areas within responsibility.

• Responsible for ensuring effective translation of science into pipelines and projects to generate the greatest value: from quick wins using existing science to longer-term research objectives with a substantiated hypothesis.

• Partner with the WPSI Research & Data Teams to devise research programs and projects that maximise the value generated for Pet Nutrition, ensuring desired claims are considered early on in the design of the projects with appropriate research measures & CSF’s in place.

• Design and oversee in vitro, ex vivo, pilot & clinical trials with external partners to test the efficacy of active ingredients or products, ensuring desired claims are considered early on in the design of the projects with appropriate research measures & CSF’s in place.

• Partner with Care Innovation team and other internal partners to define and deliver against critical success factors for successful transfer (including costing, technologies needed to deploy, etc…) to ensure scientific insights can flow into the innovation pipeline efficiently.

• Drive claims support and substantiations in collaboration with legal, SRA, and Waltham.

• Support the protection of inventions with IP teams.

• Support the Scientific Communications Team with knowledge base in health areas under responsibility. Contribute to, consult on & review created (global) technical communications materials (including technical marketing and peer reviewed publications)

• When needed, speak at veterinary conferences and other external meetings to explain the science behind our products.

• Develop internal networks at local, regional and global levels across Pet Nutrition, Royal Canin and Mars Veterinary Health, and develop key external contacts and relationships in areas relevant to the role.

• Engage relevant KOL’s on the quality of PN science to enhance brand and corporate reputation

What can you expect from Mars?

• Work with over 130,000 diverse and talented Associates, all guided by The Five Principles.

• Join a purpose driven company, where we’re striving to build the world we want tomorrow, today.

• Best-in-class learning and development support from day one, including access to our in-house Mars University.

• An industry competitive salary and benefits package, including company bonus.

Mars is an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. If you need assistance or an accommodation during the application process because of a disability, it is available upon request. The company is pleased to provide such assistance, and no applicant will be penalized as a result of such a request.