Lead Scientist (m/f/d) – Product Development Healthcare

Lead Scientist (m/f/d) - Product Development Healthcare

In this role you will lead the planning, execution, and management of multiple product development projects focused on silicone elastomers for healthcare applications, with particular emphasis on medical liquid silicone rubber (LSR) for medical devices and soft silicone adhesives for advanced wound care, as well as selected activities in long-term implant applications. As an experienced scientist and laboratory leader, you will drive both New Product and Process Development Initiatives (NPDI) and broader technology platform development, delivering innovative technical solutions for customer-specific programs and future-oriented healthcare technologies. Working closely with customers, validation partners, and cross-functional teams including Marketing, Sales, Manufacturing, Quality, and Product Stewardship, you will ensure successful project execution from concept through commercialization. The role requires strong scientific and technical leadership, the ability to evaluate complex challenges, prioritize activities based on business impact, and make sound decisions in environments characterized by ambiguity, evolving requirements, and incomplete information. In addition, you will identify opportunities for platform expansion, process improvements, and product innovation to strengthen the healthcare materials portfolio and support long-term business growth.

Responsibilities Include

• Active engagement in EHS management systems and compliance with EHS procedures; implementation of safety thinking in daily work.
• Independent planning, execution and management of multiple projects in parallel, including projects of strategic and commercial relevance for the Healthcare segment.
• Driving sustainable technology developments with focus on new silicone elastomer products and applications for healthcare, especially medical LSR and soft silicone adhesive technologies.
• Leading the technology workstream of NPDI projects as technology owner and ensuring robust project execution, prioritization, documentation and timely progress.
• Developing technical solutions for near-term customer programs and for broader platform development in support of future growth.
• Close collaboration with selected customers and validation partners, together with Segment Marketing and Sales, to identify and prioritize business opportunities, voice-of-customer inputs and critical-to-quality requirements.
• Building and maintaining a detailed understanding of customer needs, application requirements, market trends and relevant product portfolios in the medical devices and advanced wound care space.
• Formulating, characterizing, testing and scaling up silicone-based materials and systems, including formulation development, rheology, curing behavior, analytical characterization, application testing and troubleshooting.
• Managing complex, multi-variable development work with conflicting CTQs, including trade-offs related to performance, processability, manufacturability and regulatory constraints.
• Applying statistical thinking and design-of-experiments approaches to accelerate learning, improve robustness and support sound technical decisions.