Principal Scientist R&D

Location: Hershey, PAWhy Hershey: At The Hershey Company, our culture is rooted in purpose and inspired by Milton Hershey's enduring vision that business should create opportunity for others. Through our commitment to corporate philanthropy, we create positive impact by supporting communities, helping children thrive, and operating as a business for good. This includes our deep and long standing partnership with Milton Hershey School, where we invest in education, workforce readiness, and hands on engagement to help students succeed beyond the classroom. Supported by strategic grantmaking, product donations, cross brand collaboration, and strong employee volunteerism, Hershey offers a place to work where making a difference—locally and globally—is part of how we do business every day. About The Hershey Company The Hershey Company is an industry-leading snacks company known for making more moments of goodness through its iconic brands. With a strong portfolio across chocolate, confectionery, and salty snacks, Hershey delights consumers every day. Our beloved brands include Hershey's, Reese's, KitKat, Dots Pretzels, Lesser Evil, Jolly Rancher, Twizzlers, Ice Breakers, and more. At Hershey, we are committed to making a meaningful difference in the communities where we live, work, and do business. This commitment originated with our founder, Milton Hershey, and continues to shape who we are today. Guided by our employee value proposition, Lead Today. Create Tomorrow, we empower our people to drive impact now while shaping what comes next. Our One Hershey mindset brings teams together across functions, geographies, and businesses, enabling us to operate with speed, collaboration, and shared purpose. The Hershey Company is proud to be recognized as a top employer in the United States, reflecting our commitment to our people, culture, and purpose. How will you fit in the big picture? The Principal Scientist, Salty Snacks, is a senior technical leader within the Technical Product Development & Optimization organization, responsible for driving innovation, product development, and process optimization across a diverse portfolio of snack platforms. Serving as a recognized technical expert in wet-popped and air-popped popcorn, baking science, tortilla chips, potato chips, expanded snacks, and emerging snack forms, this role leads complex product and process development initiatives from concept through commercialization. The position integrates advanced scientific, regulatory, consumer, operational, and business considerations to develop differentiated products that enhance performance, quality, safety, manufacturability, and market relevance. The role provides technical leadership across cross-functional teams, guiding strategic technical decisions, resolving complex development challenges, and influencing the long-term direction of product, process, and technology platforms. Working closely with partners across Marketing, Consumer Insights, Quality, Engineering, Procurement, and Operations, the Principal Scientist shapes innovation pipelines, supports commercialization and capability-building efforts, and ensures alignment between technical solutions and business objectives. Through technical mentorship, thought leadership, and the application of emerging technologies and advanced methodologies, this role strengthens organizational capability, advances technical excellence, and contributes to the long-term growth strategy of the Salty Snacks business. What will you do? Provide technical leadership for complex salty snack product development initiatives, ensuring products meet consumer, market, regulatory, quality, cost, and manufacturing requirements. Apply scientific expertise and evidence-based decision making to develop differentiated, scalable solutions that support business growth and category objectives. Serve as the subject matter expert across core salty snack technologies, including wet-popped popcorn, air-popped popcorn, baking science, tortilla chips, potato chips, expanded snacks, and emerging snack platforms. Leverage deep technical knowledge to solve complex product and process challenges, advance innovation, and guide strategic technical decisions. Lead formulation development, process optimization, and commercialization activities from concept through launch. Oversee prototyping, ingredient system development, pilot plant trials, scale-up activities, and factory implementation to deliver products that meet performance, quality, cost, sustainability, and manufacturability objectives. Develop and maintain technical specifications, standards, and documentation for ingredients, products, and manufacturing processes that ensure regulatory compliance, quality consistency, operational effectiveness, and alignment with global manufacturing capabilities. Drive technical strategy and innovation pipeline development by partnering with commercial, consumer insights, quality, engineering, procurement, and operations teams to assess opportunities, prioritize initiatives, manage technical risk, and establish executable pathways for near- and mid-term innovation. Apply advanced scientific and data-driven methodologies to improve product performance, sensory experience, shelf life, manufacturing efficiency, and process capability, while identifying and implementing emerging technologies and innovative approaches. Support capital projects, equipment selection, and manufacturing capability development through a strong understanding of process-product interactions, processing technologies, and operational requirements. Influence organizational technical capability and thought leadership by identifying systemic challenges, developing innovative solutions, and advocating for new technologies, modernized methods, and best practices that strengthen competitive advantage. Mentor and develop scientists, engineers, and technicians, fostering technical excellence, critical thinking, and capability growth across the organization. Serve as a technical resource and representative in internal forums, supplier collaborations, and external industry engagements.