A day in the life of a cracker R&D specialist

An R&D specialist at Color of Vietnam spends most of the day on four things: tasting samples and writing notes, turning those notes into adjustment requests for the partner facility, writing product specification sheets, and following trial batches on the line. We have no laboratory of our own. The work moves between our Hanoi office and the lines of our partner facilities. Here is what an ordinary day looks like.

Early morning: samples on the table

The day starts at 8:00 with the box of samples the partner sent over the day before. Today it holds three versions of the Let's PLAY lime leaf chicken rice cracker, differing in the seasoning ratio. Each has a code on the bag and a row in the sample tracker.

Tasting is not snacking. We taste in a fixed order so that notes can be compared from one day to the next:

• Appearance: surface colour, how much the cracker has puffed, whether the seasoning is spread evenly.
• The snap and crispness of the first bite.
• Salt, sweetness, the lime leaf aroma, and whether the chicken note is a taste or only a smell.
• The aftertaste ten seconds later: still fragrant, or just salty.
• Against the reference: a rice cracker from a supermarket shelf that we bought for comparison.

Everyone writes their notes before anyone speaks, so no one is steered by the first opinion in the room. By the end there is one verdict per version: keep, adjust or drop.

Mid morning: turning notes into something a technician can use

This is the hardest part of the job. A note saying that version two tastes better is no help to the technician at the facility. They need to know what to change. The R&D specialist translates sensation into parameters: reduce salt in the seasoning blend, raise the lime leaf, hold the post bake moisture where it is, try applying the seasoning while the crackers are still warm so it sticks more evenly.

That becomes a short email with the sample code, what to change and what to keep, followed by a fifteen minute call with the partner's technician to make sure both sides picture the same thing. The facility runs its sheeting line and tunnel oven every day for many products, so our trial has to fit into their schedule. Being precise up front saves a whole extra round.

Early afternoon: the spec sheet

After lunch comes paperwork. The spec sheet (the product specification used both for production and for selling) for the lime leaf chicken cracker lists ingredients and ratios, 13.5 g per cracker, eight crackers per bag, allergens, storage conditions, expected shelf life, sensory criteria and laboratory test criteria.

The specialist checks this sheet against the COA (certificate of analysis) for each ingredient and against the recipe currently in use. A wrong line here goes straight onto the packaging and into the file we send an importer. That is why every recipe change triggers a new version of the spec sheet, with a version number and a date.

Late afternoon: a visit to the partner facility

At least once a week there is a session on the partner's line in the Thach That – Quoc Oai industrial park. If the trial batch is scheduled for this afternoon, the specialist stands beside the line from sheeting through the oven and into the seasoning drum. The tasks there are concrete: pull samples at the start, middle and end of the run, record the oven settings the partner used, and ask the technician what looked different from the previous batch. An hour beside an oven teaches things that appear on no spec sheet.

Back at the office before 17:30, the last job is updating the sample tracker: code, version, date, verdict, next step. That sheet is the team's shared memory. Anyone who misses a day can read it and know exactly where each sample stands.

What the job description leaves out

A few things candidates should know before applying:

• There is no large R&D department. You work directly with the founder and with the partner's technicians.
• There is no laboratory of our own. The trial kitchen and testing lab belong to the partner, so your calendar depends on theirs.
• Everything gets written down. Tasting notes, adjustment requests, specs, decisions. Verbal does not count.
• The role covers rice crackers, corn snacks and bars, not a single range.

The people who thrive here love eating and can describe flavour in words, write clearly, can live with trying and adjusting one flavour many times, and are comfortable saying that a sample is not there yet. Our four values, Taste First, Small Trials, See It Through and Speak Honestly, read almost like the job description.

If this sounds like the working day you want, the Fresher Product R&D role in Hanoi is open on the Careers page. Send your application with a few lines of tasting notes on a rice cracker you ate recently, written the way we have just described.