The Role
Ursa Major is looking for a passionate product development expert to join our team and lead our successful innovation effort. This is a vital role in our rapidly-growing company, one which will help ensure that we realize our product vision of becoming the go-to source for stellar clean skincare essentials for our ‘mindful explorer’ target consumer.
Ursa Major already has a stable of proven, hero products and this new leader will partner with our founders, marketing and operations team to concept, develop and bring more heroes to market, while also working to optimize existing products where necessary, and staying on top of product development operationally - e.g. making sure we manage COGs, are on top of QC and regulatory and hitting our timelines, etc.
Core Responsibilities
- - Partner with founders and marketing team to lead a strategic, innovative product development effort, with a goal of launching 4-6 wonderful, commercially-successful new products a year (including reworking a few existing formulas).
- - Proactively interact with customers on phone, text, email, and chat and work to resolve needs quickly and kindly
- - Partner with founder and ops team to source and optimize component systems for our products, with a focus on sustainability.
- - Partner with marketing team on product development market research, ideation, roadmap and strategy.
- - Take the lead on developing all new products, including any reformulations
- - own briefing, ingredient research, supplier management, testing, QC, development timelines, technical product manuals, etc.
- - Stay on the cutting edge of “green” formulation tech, clean ingredients.
- - Own and articulate our evolving clean standards, including a restricted substance list.
- - Work closely with our suppliers to gain more transparency into our supply chain, seeking out suitable certifications when it makes sense (fair trade, organic, natural, etc), and opportunities to tell “ingredient stories”.
- - Work with our Ops team to improve our understanding of manufacturing and leverage these insights to help optimize our agreements with various suppliers (formula ownership, cost management, economies of scale, etc).
- - Partner with marketing to develop engaging & effective consumer and trade-facing content (written, video) to better market & sell our products.
- - Work closely with our Ops & Cx teams, and suppliers/CMs, to proactively troubleshoot and resolve any QC issues that come up.
- - Partner with Cx to help field technical questions re: product ingredients/formulation (customer service, PR, etc).
- - Take the lead on working with outside parties to fast-track regulatory approvals so we can go live in selected overseas markets (Canada, EU, etc).
- - Otherwise, own all regulatory matters relating product development, including compliance with any natural standards, claims, etc.
About you
You are an experienced product developer with a passion for developing highly effective, clean, sublime skin, body and hair care products using both proven and cutting-edge clean ingredients. You have a track record of driving innovation and successful launches. You are creative, and have a good feel for the evolving clean beauty/skincare market, and what consumers are looking for. You nerd out 🤓 over new clean ingredients, you follow clean beauty brands on social media, and you read clean formulation blogs or trade publications. You might even attend a conference or two every year to build supplier relationships and keep tabs with the industry. You probably have some great relationships with leading clean beauty suppliers/CMs and formulators. You’re part scientist (or at least technical expert!), part designer, part doer/project manager. Above all, you have a passion for making beautiful clean formulations that move the industry forward and win awards.
Qualifications
- - Proven track record developing successful clean beauty/skincare formulations
- - 5-10+ years directly relevant experience in product development in beauty/skincare
- - Good relationships with CMs/suppliers focusing on the clean market
- - Good relationships with CMs/suppliers focusing on the clean market
- - Any direct formulation expertise, or science-based education/training in clean, a bonus
- - Any direct formulation expertise, or science-based education/training in clean, a bonus
Our Mission
Our mission at Ursa Major is to help people look, feel and do their best by infusing their skincare, and their lives, with a healthy dose of the great outdoors - while raising the bar for what it means to be a responsible company in the skincare industry.
What you’ll love about working at Ursa Major:
- - Co-workers who care about your success and wellbeing
- - Small-company feel with big growth ambitions
- - A passion for sustainability - certified B Corp
- - Competitive compensation, plus equity
- - Health benefits and paid parental leave
- - 401k with company match
- - Generous vacation time plus 2 Epic Days yearly
- - Nice, new and clean office in Waterbury, VT (dog-friendly and stocked with healthy snacks and local brews)
- - Carbon Offsets for employee commutes
- - Paid volunteer time and organized volunteer events with great organizations around VT
- - Flex-time and ability to work remotely
- - Ursa Major products - of course!
Note, please submit your application (resume + a cover letter) to careers@ursamajorvt.com. Include the exact title of the job you're applying for in the Subject Line of your email. Please note, we will only review applications with a resume AND cover letter. Thank you!
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