Ashland Specialty Ingredients, GP

Are you the kind of person that is always thinking, sketching, seeking, and adjusting? Who needs to understand how things work and then figure out how they can work better? Are you a passionate, tenacious, solver who loves to work with others who share your drive? Are you positive, constructive, and ingenious? Are you always solving? Then we’d like to meet you and bet you’d like to meet us.

Ashland has an exciting opportunity for a Principal Scientist, Hair Care & Styling to join our Personal Care business at our Bridgewater, NJ site. This is a very visible, significant role within the global Personal care R&D organization as the incumbent will be accountable to work in the lab to develop technical approaches to support Ashland technologies in hair care & styling and showcase their unique value proposition in the market.

This position will report to the Technical Service Manager Personal Care NA and will be based at our Bridgewater, NJ site.

The roles and responsibilities of the position include but are not limited to the following:

Lead the execution of customer project opportunities in the region in hair care.
Design and develop differentiated hair care formulation prototypes that showcase the unique value proposition benefits of our hair care ingredients and coordinate with the sales team to present them to the customers.
Accountable for the execution of multiple customer projects concurrently to drive business growth.
Travel to visit customers to support sales, showcase the unique value proposition benefits of our hair Care technologies. Provide technical support and troubleshooting to customers, resolve formulation issues, and recommend innovative solutions.
Respond to customer technical questions including formulations need and specific claims substantiation, and regulatory.
Lead the formulations ideation and development of hair care & styling products for the region, and conduct in-vitro testing, consumer salon testing, and data analysis to support claims that validate the value proposition of the products to the consumers.
Work with Global Hair Care Innovation teams to understand the new hair care technologies coming from Global R&D pipelines and develop testing evaluation to adapt and engage regional customers with beta sampling and follow-up.
Partner with the regional marketing manager to develop new prototype concepts and stories that demonstrate the performance of our New Product Introductions (NPI) or legacy portfolio to engage our customers and help drive sales growth.
Identify new opportunities based on Ashland’s personal care ingredients, and coordinate with R&D and marketing to develop prototype formulations plan.
Explore new technology frontiers by identifying industry trends and white spaces within the Hair Care market.
Design and deliver technical presentations, and prototypes to support marketing campaigns and customer outreach.
Responsible for training new team members, sales, distributors on our hair portfolio and prototype formulations.
Mentor and coach junior scientists and technicians, building technical capability across the team.

In order to qualify for this role, you must possess the following:

Master’s Degree in Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Materials Science & Engineering, or Biochemistry.
10+ years of formulation experience, applications testing, and product development in hair care including rinse-off (shampoo, conditioner), styling, scalp care, or hairsprays.
5+ years’ experience in personal care technical service and customer facing, providing solutions to customers.
Ability to lead projects, acquire, analyze, interpret and organize data. Writing and documenting experiments, formulations development, and protocol are required.
Excellent communication, presentation, and collaboration skills with a demonstrated ability to present to customers, influence cross-functional R&D, application teams, and senior management.
Ability to work well individually and in a collaborative team environment.
Ability to travel up to 40% as needed to visit customers and support sales

In more than 100 countries, the people of Ashland LLC. (NYSE: ASH) provide the specialty chemicals, technologies and insights to help customers create new and improved products for today and sustainable solutions for tomorrow. Our chemistry is at work every day in a wide variety of markets and applications, including architectural coatings, automotive, construction, energy, personal care and pharmaceutical. Visit www.ashland.com to see the innovations we offer.

At Ashland our vision is to be a leading, global specialty chemicals company whose inspired and engaged employees add value to all we touch. In fact our people, employees, customers and vendors define who we are. They are the driving force behind everything we do.

Not only do we value our customers but we value our employees, and we work to offer them a dynamic and challenging environment. We hold ourselves to high standards at Ashland, and we value integrity and honesty.

Ashland has a history of attracting the best people and keeping them. The reasons are simple: industry competitive salary and benefits, pay-for-performance incentive plans and a diverse work environment where employees feel challenged and valued. People come to Ashland and stay. As a growing Fortune 500 specialty chemicals company, we offer opportunities for development and advancement throughout our global organization. Our values define who we are and what we care about as a company. If you are looking for a relationship with a company instead of simply a job, this may be a great fit.

Ashland is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer Minorities/Women/Veterans/Disabled/Gender Identity/Sexual Orientation.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, or protected veteran status and will not be discriminated against on the basis of disability. NOTE: We do not accept resumes from external staffing agencies or independent recruiters for any of our openings unless we have a signed recruiting agreement in place to fill a specific position.

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