R&D Group Manager - Analytical Chemistry - Clorox - Pleasanton, CA

Nearly 90 percent of the company’s brands hold the No. 1 or No. 2 market share positions in their categories. The company’s products are manufactured in more than two dozen countries and marketed in more than 100 countries. Clorox is committed to making a positive difference in the communities where its employees work and live. Founded in 1980, The Clorox Company Foundation has awarded cash grants totaling more than $87 million to nonprofit organizations, schools and colleges. In fiscal year 2015 alone, the foundation awarded more than $3 million in cash grants, and Clorox made product donations valued at $15 million. For more information about Clorox, visit TheCloroxCompany.com.

Corporate headquarters are in Oakland, California. Corporate Research & Development is located in Pleasanton, California, GLAD Research & Development is located in Willowbrook, Illinois, a satellite Professional Product Research & Development located in Meriden, Connecticut and International Research & Development is located in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The Research and Development organization is at the heart of our business, taking new generations of consumer products from concept to reality. Over 90% of Clorox Products are #1 on the shelf, which means that we have great pride in delivering the best technology to the consumer every time. With such diverse roles as engineers, scientists, mechanical designers and packaging experts, R&D is a community of technical leaders and managers actively involved in virtually every step in the lifecycle of our products from initial concept to raw materials to final goods. R&D is committed to leveraging the latest technology to bring consumers the high-quality, innovative products they expect and deserve.

The Clorox Company has an opportunity in the Advanced Measurement Sciences (AMS) Group at our Research and Development center in Pleasanton, California for an experienced Analytical Chemistry Group Manager full time candidate.

R&D Group Manager — Analytical Chemistry Group

The Analytical Group:
The Analytical Chemistry group is part of the Advanced Measurement Sciences (AMS) department within Clorox R&D. The group is responsible for providing Analytical Chemistry support across all Clorox strategic business units (SBUs) including Cleaning, Healthcare and Specialty (Foods, Litter, Charcoal, Glad, and Burt’s Bees Personal Care). The Analytical Chemistry group works closely with multiple R&D groups including Product Development, Process, Package and other teams across all stages of the development life-cycle from concept to commercialization. The group also leads scientific measurement analyses for M&A opportunities as those arise. Some of the products that the group works on are registered with the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) such as hard-surface disinfection products and the FDA (Federal Drug Administration) such as skin care products. The group has an established in-house EPA GLP test lab and capability in the area of FDA pre-GMP testing. The group operates in a new state-of-the-art laboratory at the Clorox Pleasanton R&D campus in Pleasanton, California (San Francisco Bay Area). It is well equipped with variety of instrumentation in the areas of wet-chemistry, separations (chromatography), spectroscopy, microscopy, imaging, bio-analytical methods and physical characterization. In addition, the group works with various external labs and suppliers for meeting the unique testing needs of projects.

The Analytical Group Manager:
The Analytical Chemistry Group Manager will play two distinct roles.

• In the internal-facing role he/she will lead and manage up to 13 full-time employees, manage lab operations and collaborate with senior technical leaders to build and improve technical capabilities to meet business needs.


• In the external-facing role, the Group Manager will continually collaborate with business partners to prioritize work and provide resources to execute on-demand present as well as future business needs with excellence.

People Development: People Development is a key responsibility of the Group Manager. It involves “leading by example” and “living Clorox values”. It involves understanding the unique abilities and interests of skilled Analytical/Physical Chemists and Chemical Engineers and setting them up for a successful and rewarding career that meets the needs of both the business and the individual. It requires the ability to recognize an individual’s strengths and opportunities and providing effective constructive coaching to continue building the individual’s strengths and addressing opportunities. The Group Manager will create a compelling workplace based on technical rigor, experimental curiosity and creativity to solve technical problems to enable business results. He/she must have the ability to assess and differentiate people’s performances and recommend compensation rewards for people based on Clorox’s pay for performance philosophy. At a strategic level, the Group Manager will work with AMS management to build robust succession and talent-management plans, lead recruiting and onboarding of new members and work with each individual to prepare and execute robust development plans and drive career discussions to ensure their career growth.

Business collaboration: The key external facing role of the Group Manager is to maintain a close collaboration with key business partners in Product Development. The Group Manager, via regular interactions with her/her Product Development colleagues in the strategic business units (SBUs), will provide updates on current activities and seek feedback on upcoming work and prioritization. He/she will closely monitor fast-moving critical projects to ensure AMS can enable successful outcomes. He/she will need to staff on-demand projects quickly with the best resources for that project. The Group Manager will also work with other enabling groups such as Global Stewardship (regulatory compliance) to ensure smooth project execution.

Lab operations: Typical lab operations activities include providing guidance to technical staff on work priorities, ensuring project work is staffed and scheduled as needed, work-load is well distributed, ensuring technical staff is adequately trained and cross-trained to produce high quality results and to maintain continuity of core-operations, ensuring compliance with EHS requirements, assessing and approving equipment repair and maintenance requests priorities and prioritizing capital investments. In addition, the Group Manager will look at ways to continually improve processes and methods to improve quality, cost and efficiency.

Capability building: The Analytical Group, AMS department and Clorox R&D undertake various short-term (tactical) and long-term (strategic) initiatives to build new capabilities or leverage external capabilities, with the greatest efficiency (least cost, resources and time) to meet present and future business needs. The Group Manager will work with senior technical staff within AMS and the business R&D groups to provide guidance and resources for such initiatives.

Required Qualifications:

• Education: Ph.D. in Chemistry (Analytical, Physical, Organic, Inorganic), Physics, Chemical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science or related field. Exceptional candidates with only a M.S. degree will also be considered


• Experience: 5 to 10 years of industry experience beyond graduate school including 3 to 7yrs of direct people management experience. (Less people management experience may be considered for qualified internal candidates)


• Soft skills: Strong people (interpersonal, collaboration, listening, communication), leadership (ability to motivate and inspire others, empathy, courage to “do the right thing”, courage to make and execute decisions that are ultimately good for the Group and for Clorox), excellent time management and planning/organization skills and the ability to think tactically as well as strategically.

Desired Qualifications:

• Experience: Managing and operating an analytical lab, developing people with wide range of experiences, working in Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry, Product Development experience, working with development and/or testing of EPA and/or FDA regulated products. Prior R&D experience working on a business to develop and launch products is highly desirable to show demonstrated empathy for the consumer and business.


• The ideal candidate will be a strong R&D people leader (with or without Analytical Chemistry experience) with the required years of people management experience, a strong technical background to be able to understand the work of and lead highly technical people and with the required soft skills. Prior R&D experience in consumer or other product launches is highly desirable.

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