Interested in a career that matters?
Are you ready to use your scientific expertise to solve complex customer challenges and influence the future of Household Care business?
Join us as our Senior Industry Technology Specialist, Household Care, based in Chiba, Japan. You will act as a trusted technical partner for strategically important customers and opportunities. You will translate customer, business, and consumer needs into high-value technical solutions supported by compelling experimental evidence.
You will join the HHC Technical Services JKO team, which supports Household Care customers across Japan, Korea, and Oceania. Our customer-facing technical specialists and laboratory colleagues work closely with Sales, R&D, Marketing, Application Research, Business and Product Units, and regional and global Technical Services. Together, we share knowledge, apply scientific rigor, and turn Novonesis technologies into practical biosolutions that create meaningful customer and business impact.
The Role & Your Impact
This role combines advanced technical execution, innovation, project leadership, and customer influence. You will independently define the technical strategy for complex and sometimes ambiguous challenges, while coordinating stakeholders across countries and functions without formal authority.
Your key responsibilities will include:
- Lead customer-focused technical solutions. Act as a senior technical partner for strategically important and technically complex opportunities. Engage customer technical stakeholders and decision-makers, translate business and consumer needs into technical strategies, and use scientific evidence to influence formulation, product-development, testing, and implementation decisions.
- Provide advanced application and experimental leadership. Independently design and lead complex laboratory, field, and customer trials. Develop or adapt test methods, apply advanced experimental design, DoE, and statistical analysis, and integrate formulation, enzyme-application, process, and competitor knowledge to generate robust insights.
- Advance priority opportunities and manage technical risks. Partner proactively with Account Managers to shape, prioritize, and execute technical plans for major opportunities and threats. Connect customer requirements with Novonesis capabilities, align cross-functional resources, document technical interactions in Salesforce, and translate technical evidence into measurable customer and business value.
- Drive product and project excellence through launch. Represent the HHC TS JKO team in cross-functional product-development and launch activities. Lead AQA-related planning, test marketing, customer validation, rollout activities, and the development of high-quality test methods, demonstrations, technical materials, and sales-enablement resources.
- Solve complex product and process challenges. Lead troubleshooting related to customer formulations, manufacturing processes, application performance, and product implementation while ensuring safety, quality, environmental compliance, documentation standards, and data integrity.
- Strengthen innovation and technical capability. Identify emerging customer, competitor, regulatory, and technology trends. Develop new technical approaches, share learning across regions, and mentor colleagues through technical sparring, project guidance, and training.
What You’ll Need to Be Successful
To succeed in this role, you will need:
- A Master’s degree or Ph.D. in biotechnology, biochemistry, chemistry, chemical engineering, biology, or a related scientific or engineering field. A Bachelor’s degree may be considered when combined with substantial directly relevant industry experience.
- Strong experience in industrial technical service, application research, product development, formulation, or another customer-facing technical role.
- Demonstrated ownership of complex technical projects and customer interactions.
- Advanced knowledge of experimental design, application testing, method development, data interpretation, and technical troubleshooting.
- Experience applying DoE and statistical analysis to complex data sets.
- Strong digital capabilities for data capture, transformation, visualization, reporting, and technical documentation.
- The ability to connect scientific findings with customer formulations, manufacturing processes, consumer-relevant performance, and business needs.
- The ability to lead technical discussions and communicate clear recommendations to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Demonstrated ability to influence decisions through scientific evidence and coordinate cross-functional work without formal authority.
- Professional fluency in Japanese and business-level English, both written and spoken.
- A commitment to safe handling of materials and equipment, data integrity, quality, environmental requirements, and compliance.
You will also bring the following essential capabilities:
- Customer influence and trusted technical partnership: You build credibility with customer stakeholders, frame technical decisions clearly, and use evidence to influence outcomes.
- Advanced analytical problem-solving: You navigate complex and ambiguous challenges and turn multidimensional data into practical recommendations.
- Technical leadership and collaboration: You provide expert guidance and mobilize teams across a network-based matrix organization.
- Ownership and resilience: You manage priorities independently, communicate risks early, and take accountability for complex deliverables.
- Scientific curiosity and innovation: You challenge established approaches and explore better methods and solutions.
Additional Skills & Interests We Value
The following qualifications and experience would be valuable, but are not mandatory:
- Deep knowledge of Household Care, detergents, cleaning products, enzymes, biotechnology, or adjacent consumer-product industries.
- Strong understanding of Household Care applications and relevant product portfolios.
- Experience using Salesforce or another CRM platform.
- Experience with technical opportunity management, account planning, or working directly with Sales to advance commercial pipelines.
- Experience leading customer trials, scale-up activities, manufacturing troubleshooting, product launches, or regional technical projects.
- Experience mentoring colleagues, delivering technical training, or sharing expertise across functions and geographies.
- Awareness of relevant customer, competitor, regulatory, and technology trends.
- Interest in developing new application methods and innovative biosolutions with meaningful customer impact.
What We Offer
At Novonesis, you will have the opportunity to combine science, customer partnership, and innovation to create solutions that make a real difference.
In this position, you will:
- Take ownership of strategically important and technically complex customer opportunities.
- Influence customer and business decisions across Japan, Korea, and Oceania.
- Work with an international network of technical, commercial, research, marketing, and product experts.
- Expand your expertise through complex customer projects, product-development activities, and regional collaboration.
- Strengthen the capabilities of others through mentoring, technical guidance, and knowledge sharing.
- Contribute to a culture shaped by Care, Explore, Impact, and Ownership.
- Help customers translate biological innovation into practical, high-value Household Care solutions.
Ways of Working / Working Conditions
- The position is based in Chiba, Japan, due to its customer-facing responsibilities, collaboration with the local laboratory, and the requirement for professional Japanese-language capability.
- Occasional regional or international travel for projects, training, and collaboration.
- Hands-on collaboration with laboratory colleagues and cross-functional teams.
- Flexibility to adapt travel and on-site presence to business and customer needs.
Our purpose guides the way
In Novonesis, we know that solutions rooted in biology can help solve humanity’s biggest challenges. Since we began more than a century ago, this has been our guide. It’s how we've gotten so far. And it’s how we'll impact the future. Now, more than ever, the world needs change. And with biosolutions, the possibilities for transformation are endless. If our purpose resonates with you, we encourage you to apply.
Opportunities for everyone
We are committed to an inclusive recruitment process and equal opportunity for all applicants. Therefore we ask you to apply without a cover letter or photo and instead include a few sentences in your CV explaining your motivation for applying.
We make all employment decisions based on business needs and welcome candidates with a wide range of backgrounds, including ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, or veteran status.
Explore other openings
If this position isn’t the right fit, you may still find other opportunities with us. You’re welcome to explore open roles or create a job agent to stay connected with future opportunities at novonesis.com/Career
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