Sr. Director, Owned Brands & Culinary R&D

About Us

At Hungryroot, we understand that food is deeply personal—it fuels our bodies and minds, impacting how we feel and function every day. Yet, the current food system makes it difficult to make healthy, enjoyable choices. With busy lifestyles and traditional grocery experiences that leave us overwhelmed, many struggle to find balance. Hungryroot is changing that through a seamless digital experience designed to make healthy eating effortless.

Our cutting-edge AI technology, SmartCart™, powers a personalized meal planning and grocery shopping experience that is tailored to each customer’s unique preferences, dietary needs, budget, and goals. By recommending the right groceries and recipes, SmartCart™ saves hours of meal prep and shopping time, reduces stress, and ensures that customers always have fresh, nutritious options on hand. With an intuitive, easy-to-use digital platform, we bring variety and convenience to the forefront, helping customers discover new foods they love, while minimizing waste and saving money. At Hungryroot, we’re building the most consumer-centric food and wellness company to ever exist, empowering people to eat healthier, feel better, and make food choices that truly support their well-being. 

We are a distributed team built on top talent from over 28 states across the U.S. While we have a headquarters in New York City, we support employees working from wherever they are based. We believe in fostering team connection and collaboration across all of our employees' locations. Expect to attend regular team building events and an annual company retreat. Expect to be treated like an owner who cares about our common goal, not someone who has to clock in and out of work.

About the role

We’re looking for a strategic and hands-on Sr. Director of Owned Brands & Culinary R&D to lead the end-to-end development of Hungryroot’s private label assortment and our culinary recipe innovation. This person will play a critical role in identifying white space within our assortment, developing innovative new product concepts, overseeing formulation and recipe development, and ensuring high-quality execution from ideation through launch.

You’ll collaborate closely with merchandising, category management, and operations, and manage both external manufacturing partners and our in-house culinary team. The ideal candidate blends creative culinary vision with disciplined execution and thrives at the intersection of product strategy, food trends, and customer experience.

Responsibilities

Product Strategy & Innovation

• Own and evolve Hungryroot’s private label product development strategy in partnership with merchandising and category teams.
• Identify opportunities to expand and differentiate the owned brand assortment based on customer needs, business goals, and trend insights.
• Translate market and consumer insights into new product concepts and category strategies.

Culinary Product Development

• Lead the development of innovative product formulations that meet Hungryroot’s nutritional and culinary standards.
• Iterate on product formulations to achieve desired customer experience
• Partner with culinary experts to prototype and test new products and recipes.

Cross-functional Execution

• Manage the end-to-end product development process: from ideation and brief through R&D, testing, packaging & design, and scale-up.
• Work closely with manufacturing partners and internal operations teams to ensure consistency, quality, and scalability.
• Establish and oversee timelines, critical paths, and cross-functional checkpoints to deliver projects on time and on spec.

Culinary Leadership & Meal Development

• Lead our internal team of chefs responsible for developing new, easy-to-make meal recipes using the ingredients available in our store.
• Oversee recipe development that supports a variety of meal occasions, dietary needs, and nutrition goals.
• Stay on the pulse of food and flavor trends to inspire ongoing meal and recipe innovation.
• Ensure recipe content aligns with Hungryroot’s brand promise and helps customers discover healthy, craveable meals.

Quality & Brand Standards

• Own quality assurance protocols and product standards for all private label items.
• Lead continuous improvement efforts in taste, nutritional value, and product consistency.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in food product development, culinary innovation, or private label strategy, ideally in a grocery, CPG, or foodtech environment.
• Experience leading culinary or recipe development teams, with a strong understanding of nutrition and consumer health goals.
• Proven success bringing new food products to market—end-to-end—from concept to scale.
• Experience working directly with co-manufacturers or co-packers.
• Strong project management skills with ability to manage multiple timelines and cross-functional workstreams.
• Deep knowledge of culinary trends, food formulation, and recipe development.
• Passion for healthy food, simplicity, and delivering delight through the customer experience.
• Natural collaborator who can work cross-functionally and inspire both internal and external partners.

Perks & Benefits

• Remote-first: work from home, work from our NYC office, work from anywhere in the U.S. - you decide!
• Equity 
• Unlimited vacation policy
• Universal paid parental leave
• Monthly Hungryroot credit for delicious, healthy groceries
• Comprehensive health, vision, dental, and life insurance
• Wellbeing benefits including One Medical, Spring Health, LiveHealth, Rightway care concierge, and more
• 401k with Match
• A work from home stipend to support your initial home-office setup

Expected Pay Range:
$200,000 - $235,000

The employer will not sponsor applicants for work visas.

Our mission to help make healthy eating easy, accessible, and joyful is better served by a diverse workplace. We are a proud Equal Opportunity Employer committed to building an inclusive workplace. We have zero-tolerance for harassment or discrimination. We do not discriminate on the basis of any protected class.