Analytical Manager Food & Beverages

About the Role

Alesayi Beverages is seeking an Analytical Manager for Food & Beverages to join their team in Makkah, with operations spanning Jeddah and Makkah. This full-time role involves leading analytical testing and method development to support product development, ingredient assessment, troubleshooting, and regulatory technical requirements for beverage and food products. The Analytical Manager ensures that all laboratory work is scientifically sound, traceable, timely, and compliant with approved procedures, applicable regulations, and recognized analytical standards.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead analytical laboratory operations, including planning and prioritizing testing activities, managing sample workflows, maintaining reliable records, and optimizing laboratory resource utilization.
• Perform and oversee instrumental analysis using HPLC, IC, and GC, including routine checks, troubleshooting, and coordinating instrument maintenance.
• Conduct comprehensive food and beverage testing on raw materials, ingredients, intermediate samples, and finished products for parameters such as sugars, sweeteners, preservatives, organic acids, caffeine, vitamins, ions, and other product-specific compounds.
• Develop, optimize, verify, validate, and transfer analytical methods, assessing their suitability for intended use and documenting performance characteristics like precision, accuracy, linearity, selectivity, LOD, and LOQ.
• Interpret analytical data, review chromatograms, investigate unexpected or out-of-specification results, identify potential causes, and document conclusions and follow-up actions.
• Issue clear, accurate, and traceable analytical reports, maintaining raw data, calculations, instrument logs, calibration records, controlled methods, and sample traceability.
• Provide regulatory technical support by preparing analytical evidence and technical documentation for product registrations, technical dossiers, customer requests, and communication with SFDA and other relevant authorities.
• Apply relevant SFDA/GCC requirements, recognized ISO and AOAC methods, good laboratory practices, data-integrity principles, and applicable safety procedures.
• Expand in-house analytical capabilities, evaluate new methods and equipment, support proficiency testing or inter-laboratory comparisons, and reduce reliance on external laboratories where technically and economically justified.
• Collaborate with R&D, Quality, Production, and other departments, providing analytical findings and technical recommendations while maintaining the role’s reporting line within R&D.
• Ensure the confidentiality of recipes, formulations, customer information, and proprietary analytical data.

Key Performance Indicators

• Timeliness and completeness of analytical reports.
• Reliability and reproducibility of results, including compliance with established QC acceptance criteria.
• Successful completion and implementation of analytical method development, verification, and validation projects.
• Reduction in external testing through validated, fit-for-purpose in-house methods.
• Compliance with approved methods, documentation, equipment control, and traceability requirements.
• Timely investigation and documentation of analytical discrepancies and unexpected results.
• Instrument availability and completion of scheduled checks and maintenance coordination.

Qualifications and Experience

• A minimum of 5 to 10 years of relevant experience in analytical testing and method development, preferably within the food and beverage industry.
• Demonstrated expertise in instrumental analysis, including HPLC, IC, and GC.
• Strong understanding of regulatory requirements (SFDA/GCC), ISO, and AOAC methods.
• Proficiency in data interpretation, investigation, and reporting.

Work Environment and Reporting

This position is a full-time role within the R&D Department at Alesayi Beverages, reporting directly to the R&D Director. The primary accountability of this role is to provide analytical laboratory capability and technical support for R&D initiatives. While the role collaborates with Quality and other functions as needed, it does not assume ownership of the Quality Department.