Sr. Engineer, R&D Packaging Materials – Flexible Film and Paper

Job Description

Job Purpose  

​​As the Packaging Materials Engineer, you will support the development and advancement of flexible film and paper packaging material solutions for the North American portfolio. The objective of the role is to identify, develop, evaluate, and validate material technologies that meet functional performance, manufacturability, cost, and sustainability requirements while supporting innovation, compliance, and value engineering initiatives. You will partner with Innovation, Process, and Platform packaging teams and cross-functional stakeholders to translate technical and sustainability requirements into commercially manufacturable solutions, supporting proof of concept, scale-up activities, and transition to business units.​  

Essential Functions & Responsibilities  

• ​​Support and execute flexible film and paper packaging material development work, balancing technology exploration with proof-of-concept activities and documenting learnings to support business cases and application decisions. 

• ​Support coordination of external partnerships across the value chain (e.g., resin, coating, material suppliers; universities; institutes; start-ups; open innovation networks; scouting partners) by managing technical communication, sample/testing plans, and data exchange under guidance. 

• ​Ensure packaging material/design decisions align with enterprise standards, manufacturability needs, sustainability requirements, and platform direction by applying standard methods and escalating risks/constraints. 

• ​Contribute to technical problem solving for flexible film and paper packaging projects by running testing, troubleshooting, and root-cause investigations as needed. 

• ​Apply Design of Experiments (DoE), statistics, and structured technical problem-solving practices to research, development, and validation work. 

• ​Support prototyping development for consumer testing, pilot line setup, and scale-up to industrial production as required to enable commercialization. 

• ​Contribute to technical documentation and knowledge sharing (e.g., summaries, test reports, learnings) to support team capability-building and consistency. 

• ​Partner with cross-functional stakeholders (e.g., Innovation, Process, Platform Packaging) to translate requirements into testable material/package options and to support handover to business units.​ 

Key Outputs & Deliverables  

• Support execution of flexible film and paper packaging technology/material workstreams aligned with sustainability, innovation, and value engineering initiatives. 

• Deliver technical work products (e.g., test plans, prototypes, validation results, recommendations) that support flexible film and paper packaging projects from concept through proof of concept and handover, meeting agreed timelines and technical performance targets. 

• Support compliance with evolving sustainability and regulatory requirements, including: