Senior Variant Scientist Jobs in Chicago, IL (NOW HIRING)

The Fynder Group is seeking a product leader to sit at the intersection of customer need, technical capability, and commercial strategy for the Fy platform. This role combines opportunity strategy with downstream product-line stewardship: identifying attractive application spaces, translating technical insights into compelling value propositions, and guiding the product, pricing, roadmap, and commercialization choices that follow.

The right person will be comfortable moving in both directions: from market need to technical solution, and from observed functionality to commercially relevant opportunity. They will work closely with ingredient science, applications, business development, and leadership to shape where to play, how to win, and how to scale the platform through disciplined product-line decisions over time.

This role is well-suited for someone who combines technical fluency, strong commercial instincts, analytical rigor, and sound judgment. The person in this role does not need to be the primary scientist, but must be technically credible enough to shape hypotheses, interpret results, and ensure technical work remains grounded in commercially relevant questions.

Opportunity and application strategy

• Build and maintain a prioritized pipeline of application opportunities across the Fy platform

• Identify attractive customer segments, use cases, and application spaces

• Clarify where Fy can create differentiated value and where it is less likely to win

• Recommend priorities based on customer need, technical plausibility, value-in-use, and strategic fit
  

Value proposition and market translation

• Translate formulation and technical results into clear, commercially relevant value propositions

• Build value-in-use cases by application and customer type

• Frame Fy against incumbent ingredients and alternative solution sets

• Develop clear internal and external narratives grounded in customer buying logic
  

Product-line strategy and roadmap

• Translate market, customer, and technical learning into product positioning, commercial product definition, variant priorities, and roadmap recommendations

• Help define which capabilities, product forms, and use cases should receive the greatest focus over time

• Inform tradeoffs across adjacent opportunities, product improvements, and development priorities

• Support decisions on where to deepen investment versus maintain or deprioritize effort
  

Pricing, prioritization, and commercialization strategy

• Develop pricing and value architecture across priority applications and customer segments

• Support prioritization across customers, applications, and constrained internal resources or supply

• Contribute to business cases, sequencing decisions, and go/no-go recommendations for major opportunities

• Help shape commercialization logic for priority opportunities, including key launch-readiness considerations
  

Technical-commercial integration

• Bring customer-back and market-back logic into ingredient and applications workstreams

• Help shape hypotheses and assess whether experimental comparisons, ranges, and formulation windows are commercially relevant

• Identify when deeper experimentation is warranted and when ideas can be ruled in or out earlier through logic and analysis

• Translate observed technical signals into new product or market opportunity hypotheses

Technical and commercial foundation

• Strong technical comfort in food, ingredient, or applications environments

• Strong commercial intuition and product judgment

• Ability to connect customer need, technical functionality, economic logic, and product-line choices

• Technical credibility in areas such as formulation tradeoffs, structure-function thinking, rheology/texture-related concepts, nutritional value, and value-in-use
  

Strategic judgment and cross-functional leadership

• Ability to synthesize voice of customer, customer and market signals, and technical learning into clear product theses

• Ability to balance instinct and pattern recognition with deeper analytical work

• Comfort working with scientists and formulators while staying grounded in customer and market reality

• Ability to influence cross-functional teams effectively without direct authority
  

Working style

• Strong communication in both internal technical settings and external customer-facing discussions

• High self-direction and comfort creating structure in a dynamic environment

• Curiosity, rigor, and a disciplined approach to problem solving

• Ability to think beyond individual wins toward product, pricing, and commercialization choices that build a stronger platform over time

Prior experience selling into food companies or leading customer-facing technical workshops is valuable, but the most important traits are technical fluency, opportunity selection instincts, sound business judgment, and the ability to connect science to commercially relevant decisions.