The CTO will be responsible for driving innovation, quality and efficiency in our formulations ensuring that products meet all quality and regulatory standards as well as customer expectations.

The role will oversee all formulation development facilities, associated recourses, on-going process improvement, relevant third-party discussions and subsequent formulation project engagement and management. In addition to this, there is an important link with intellectual property protection.

Your work within the R&D team consist of:

• Develop roadmap for proprietary technology
  1. Set technology roadmap to deepen existing and develop new formulation technology platforms; contribute to company overall strategy
  2. Translate the roadmap into an operational plan, including required resources, budget and anticipated timelines as input to overall business forecast
  3. Keep abreast of relevant formulation, technology and market developments which impact the company; maintain network with (potential) suppliers and technology partners of Gowan Netherlands
  4. Bring new ideas and/or support in developing new ideas (on formulations, platforms, patents, ...)
• Execute to the roadmap
  1. Ensure execution of the operational plan, including managing the lab on a day-to-day basis and having direct people responsibility
  2. Initiate and maintain contact with Gowan Netherlands’ technology and distribution partners; identify and realize cooperation possibilities with our partners
  3. Execute project management, as needed with our partners: from set-up (contract, plan, team, scope, governance) to strategic and operational steering and finally successful closure
  4. Manage the development funnel, including quality control and stage gating
  5. Explain the characteristics of the formulations to business relationships (e.g. distributors) and a wider audience
  6. Manage facilities, associated recourses, and on-going process improvement
• Supporting roles
  1. Guiding technology transfer to third party manufacturers and providing technical support to production
  2. Supporting sales and registration efforts where possible
  3. Ensuring close cooperation between R&D and our intellectual property protection efforts

• PhD (ideally) or Master Degree in (organic) chemistry.
• Analytical skill set, flexible, ability to interact with any level within organizations
• Ability to self-motivate, multi-task and work independently and within a team
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English
• Experience in realizing technology innovation in Crop protection, Seed treatment and Post-harvest and successfully executing projects
• People leadership: managing a team of highly skilled, professional people and developing them
• Affinity with company’ objective of environmentally friendly crop protection
• Experience with scaling up to (pilot) production is a big plus