Senior Specialist, Innovation

It's fun to work in a company where people truly believe in what they are doing!

Role Summary

The Senior Specialist, Innovation plays a critical role in advancing Neogen’s pipeline of high‑impact innovations across Food Safety and Animal Health. This individual translates unmet customer needs into validated concepts and scalable solutions, applying disciplined innovation methodologies to reduce risk, accelerate learning, and increase the probability of commercial and technical success. The role operates at the intersection of science, technology, customer insight, and business strategy.

Senior Specialist, Innovation

Food Safety & Animal Health

About the Role

The Senior Specialist, Innovation plays a critical role in advancing Neogen’s pipeline of high-impact innovations across Food Safety and Animal Health. This individual translates unmet customer needs into validated concepts and scalable solutions, applying disciplined innovation methodologies to reduce risk, accelerate learning, and increase the probability of commercial and technical success.

The role operates at the intersection of science, technology, customer insight, and business strategy and partners extensively across R&D, Product Management, Commercial, Regulatory, Quality, Operations, and digital teams.

Key Responsibilities

Opportunity Identification & Need Definition

• •Lead structured discovery efforts to uncover unmet needs across food and animal safety laboratories, manufacturing environments, farms, and veterinary settings
• •Plan, conduct, and synthesize voice-of-customer research, field observations, and stakeholder interviews to identify customer pain points and jobs to be done
• •Translate qualitative and quantitative insights into clearly articulated need statements with defined users, use contexts, and measurable success criteria
• •Assess unmet needs against strategic fit, customer value, regulatory constraints, and Neogen’s core capabilities to support portfolio prioritization
• •Develop early value hypotheses, adoption assumptions, and problem framing to guide downstream innovation activities

Concept Creation & De-Risking

• •Partner with cross-functional teams to generate, evaluate, and refine solution concepts spanning physical products, assays, instruments, digital tools, workflows, and service models
• •Collaborate with R&D, Engineering, Data Science, Quality, Regulatory, and Commercial teams to explore technical feasibility and differentiation
• •Build and test early concepts through experiments, prototypes, pilots, and customer feedback loops to reduce technical, usability, and market risk
• •Define use cases, workflows, and system-level concepts that integrate hardware, consumables, software, and data
• •Support intellectual property strategy by contributing to invention disclosures and freedom-to-operate discussions

Innovation Readiness & Implementation Support

• •Prepare concepts for progression through Neogen’s innovation governance process by clearly documenting desirability, feasibility, and viability evidence
• •Partner with Product Management, Operations, Quality, and Regulatory teams to support scale-up, validation, and launch readiness
• •Identify risks related to adoption, workflow disruption, training burden, or regulatory approval and recommend mitigation strategies
• •Ensure customer value propositions are clear, evidence-based, and aligned with real-world usage and purchasing drivers
• •Support the transition from innovation into development or commercialization while preserving the original customer intent

Cross-Functional Collaboration & Influence

• •Serve as a connector across Innovation, R&D, Commercial, Regulatory, Quality, Operations, and other functions to promote alignment and shared understanding
• •Plan and facilitate structured innovation workshops, ideation sessions, and decision reviews
• •Lead through influence by clearly communicating insights, trade-offs, and recommendations to senior stakeholders
• •Serve as a trusted thought partner to scientific and technical teams, helping frame problems before solutions are pursued

Portfolio & Strategic Contribution

• •Contribute to the continuous improvement of Neogen’s innovation processes, tools, and decision criteria
• •Support portfolio-level thinking by identifying patterns across customer needs, technologies, and market segments
• •Help ensure innovation investments align with Neogen’s strategic focus on high-impact, scalable Food Safety and Animal Health solutions
• •Track and analyze innovation learnings and outcomes to inform future opportunity areas and capability development

Innovation Culture & Capability Building

• •Champion disciplined, customer-centered innovation practices across the organization
• •Mentor project teams and junior contributors on needs-driven innovation, experimentation, and evidence-based decision-making
• •Promote a learning mindset that values early insight, rapid feedback, and thoughtful risk-taking

Basic Qualifications

• •Bachelor’s degree in Science, Engineering, Design, Business, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience
• •8+ years of relevant professional experience in innovation, R&D, product development, product management, strategy, customer discovery, or a related technical or commercial role
• •Experience leading or supporting customer discovery, voice-of-customer research, stakeholder interviews, observational research, or other needs-finding activities
• •Experience applying structured innovation methodologies such as Design Thinking, Jobs to Be Done, BioDesign, Lean Startup, Human-Centered Design, or comparable frameworks
• •Experience translating ambiguous customer problems into defined need statements, use cases, success criteria, value propositions, or early business hypotheses
• •Experience supporting concept development and de-risking through prototypes, experiments, pilots, technical feasibility assessments, or customer feedback
• •Experience facilitating workshops, synthesizing complex information, and influencing cross-functional stakeholders without direct authority
• •Experience developing or contributing to business cases that consider customer value, strategic fit, technical feasibility, adoption risk, market opportunity, or commercial viability
• •Experience working across scientific, technical, regulatory, quality, commercial, operations, or digital/data functions
• •Experience working in regulated environments where quality, validation, compliance, or customer workflow requirements influence business or product decisions
• •Ability to travel up to 30% based on business and customer needs. Travel requirements may vary by month, with some periods requiring less travel depending on project activity, customer engagement, and business priorities.

Preferred Qualifications

• •Advanced degree in Science, Engineering, Business, Design, or a related field
• •Experience in food safety, animal health, diagnostics, life sciences, contract or central laboratories, agriculture, veterinary health, or another regulated technical market
• •Experience with product development, commercialization, portfolio management, or stage-gate/governance processes
• •Experience with digital solutions, data-enabled workflows, software-enabled products, automation, LIMS/connectivity, or digital transformation
• •Experience developing solutions that integrate hardware, consumables, software, and data
• •Experience supporting intellectual property activities, including invention disclosures or freedom-to-operate discussions

What Will Help You Succeed

• •Strong customer orientation and curiosity
• •Ability to work through ambiguity and bring structure to complex problems
• •Strong analytical, critical-thinking, and problem-solving skills
• •Ability to translate scientific and technical information into clear business and customer insights
• •Strong facilitation, communication, and stakeholder-management skills
• •Ability to influence without dir