Company Overview
Glenhaven Foods are one of Ireland’s largest poultry processors, specialising in coated, marinated, cooked, and raw frozen poultry across food service and retail. Proudly 100% Irish privately owned business, Glenhaven Foods was first established in 1986 in Avoca. Our head office is a purpose-built facility comprising of two separate factories and is home to over 180 colleagues located just outside Arklow, Co. Wicklow, in the picturesque ‘Garden of Ireland’.
At Glenhaven Foods we strive to bring a passion for food and purpose together. Our unrivalled expertise in the frozen poultry market, our passion for quality food and our focus on relationships, have all helped us to grow and succeed.
Glenhaven has four fully integrated continuous coating lines with the capabilities to produce both bagged and carton products supplying all the major retailers, food service operators and distributors both in IOI and the UK.
Role Overview:
The NPD Technologist is responsible for creating and maintaining accurate product specifications while supporting the development, scale up and continuous improvement of food production processes.
The role ensures all products meet food safety, quality, legal, and customer standards. The technologist works cross-functionally with NPD, Quality and Production teams to deliver robust, scalable, and compliant products.
Key Responsibilities:
- Develop and maintain live specifications for new and existing products, in line with all appropriate NPD, quality, sourcing, safety and legal requirements of our customers and against company policy.
- Work as part of the team to ensure process and meat core instruction documents are drafted, approved and kept up to date for all new and existing products.
- Assist with the completion of finished product specifications with the assistance of other Departments to ensure compliance with customer requirements, food safety, quality and company policies.
- Assist the NPD team in generating, developing and implementing the recipe professor software package.
- Assist R&D, Quality and production teams with the completion of product specific QAS’s and factory process instructions.
- Engage directly with customers to address specification queries and generate pack copy documents necessary for pack design.
- Support and contribute to HACCP development, implementation, and review.
- Ensure that all records generated are maintained in good condition, retrievable, stored securely and reviewed where necessary.
- To assist in providing accurate and efficient technical support to the NPD team
Key Skills and Experience:
- Degree in Food Science, Food Technology, Culinary Arts, or related discipline (or equivalent industry experience).
- Proven experience in food specifications and process development.
- Experience within a similar role in the meat or fish industry a distinct advantage.
- Experience with specification systems and retailer/customer portals.
- Excellent communication, presentation, and organisational skills.
- Experience in factory trials, scale up and process validation.
- Understanding of data collection, analysis and reporting for process optimisation.
Key Attributes:
- High attention to detail and strong data accuracy focus.
- Technically minded with confidence using systems.
- Strong collaboration skills across NPD, Quality and production.
- Adaptable and proactive in a fast paced environment
Job Types: Full-time, Permanent
Pay: €28,700.00-€35,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Bike to work scheme
- Company pension
- On-site parking
Ability to commute/relocate:
- Arklow, County Wicklow: reliably commute or plan to relocate before starting work (required)
Experience:
- product specification : 1 year (required)
- Food manufacturing : 1 year (preferred)
Work Location: In person
