R&D Chemist - Laundry/Home Cleaning Products- San Fernando Valley, CA

R&D Chemist – Laundry & Home Cleaning Products

Location: San Fernando Valley, CA | Employment Type: Full-Time | Work Arrangement: Onsite

Position Overview

We are seeking a hands-on R&D Chemist to support the development of innovative laundry care, household cleaning, and air-freshening products. This role will formulate, test, improve, and scale consumer home-care products from early concepts through pilot and production batches.

The ideal candidate brings strong laboratory discipline, curiosity, and a practical understanding of formulated consumer products. Working closely with product development, process engineering, quality, regulatory, and manufacturing teams, this person will help deliver high-performing products that meet customer briefs, performance expectations, safety requirements, and market-specific standards.

What You’ll Do

• Develop and evaluate formulations for laundry detergents, fabric-care products, household surface cleaners, dish-care products, room sprays, linen mists, and diffuser products.
• Interpret product briefs, including target format, active levels, ingredient restrictions, performance requirements, and customer-specific standards.
• Prepare lab batches, prototypes, finished-goods samples, and raw-material evaluations for development, stability, and performance testing.
• Accurately document formulas, test results, batch records, sample submissions, Certificates of Analysis, and product labels in real time.
• Troubleshoot formulation, processing, stability, and performance issues and recommend practical adjustments.
• Partner with process engineering and manufacturing teams to scale formulas from laboratory batches to pilot and commercial production.
• Provide technical support to product development managers, customers, compounders, quality teams, and other cross-functional stakeholders.
• Support pilot runs and early production batches to help ensure successful manufacturing execution.
• Maintain laboratory equipment, support calibration activities, and keep the laboratory organized, compliant, and audit-ready.
• Follow applicable safety, environmental, Good Laboratory Practice, cGMP, and Standard Operating Procedure requirements.
• Request and assess new raw-material samples and supporting technical documentation.
• Stay current on home-care formulation trends, ingredients, regulations, and industry developments.
• Contribute to a collaborative R&D environment and assist with additional laboratory or departmental needs as assigned.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Biochemistry, or a related scientific discipline.
• At least 1–2 years of experience in a junior chemist, formulation, product development, or related consumer-products laboratory role.
• Experience or strong interest in household, industrial, institutional, or consumer home-care products.
• Working knowledge of formulation principles, including surfactant systems, builders, enzymes, emulsions, suspensions, and raw-material chemistry.
• Familiarity with ingredient declarations, INCI or chemical nomenclature, and product documentation practices.
• Understanding of global home-care regulations and formulation considerations is a plus.
• Exposure to laundry, fabric care, dish care, surface cleaning, or air-care formulation is preferred.
• Strong attention to detail, data integrity, organization, and technical problem-solving skills.
• Comfort working with laboratory equipment, preparing batches, and supporting plant-scale activities.
• Proficiency with standard computer applications and technical documentation tools.
• Ability to work onsite regularly in the San Fernando Valley.

Preferred Experience

• Development of liquid detergents, unit-dose products, fabric softeners, sprays, cleaners, dish-care products, or air-freshening systems.
• Natural, clean-label, or sustainability-oriented formulation work.
• Reverse engineering, product reformulation, competitive benchmarking, or new-product innovation.
• Participation in laboratory audits, quality systems, or manufacturing scale-up.