Company: This global flavours and speciality ingredients business supplies technically complex solutions to leading food, beverage and consumer product manufacturers across international markets.

The organisation combines strong technical expertise, long-standing customer relationships and a highly regulated product portfolio. Regulatory affairs plays a critical role in supporting customer responsiveness, protecting proprietary formulations, ensuring compliance, and helping the business navigate an increasingly complex regulatory environment.

As part of longer-term succession planning and continued development of the North American regulatory function, the business is looking to appoint a senior regulatory leader who can provide both technical expertise and strong people leadership.

Role: The VP of Regulatory Affairs will lead the North American regulatory function for the flavours business, acting as a key interface between local commercial, technical and operational teams, as well as the wider global regulatory organisation.

This is a highly visible leadership position requiring a strong understanding of US flavour regulatory affairs, including FEMA, industry advocacy, customer documentation, formula protection, and evolving regulatory topics at both federal and state level.

The successful candidate will be responsible for leading and developing a local regulatory team, improving service levels, strengthening cross-functional collaboration, and ensuring regulatory affairs is positioned as a proactive partner to the wider business.

This is not a purely technical regulatory role. It requires a balanced profile, combining deep regulatory knowledge with commercial awareness, customer orientation, leadership capability and the ability to engage credibly with external industry bodies and internal stakeholders.

Main Responsibilities

• Lead the North American regulatory affairs function for the flavours business, ensuring effective support to commercial, technical, customer service and operational teams.

• Manage, develop and engage the local regulatory team, creating greater structure, accountability and connection with the wider business.

• Act as a senior regulatory expert on US flavour regulations, including FEMA-related matters, formula protection, state-level regulatory developments and emerging food policy topics.

• Represent the business externally where required, including engagement with relevant industry associations, regulatory bodies, legal contacts and government-related stakeholders.

• Provide strategic regulatory input on industry advocacy topics, customer requirements, compliance risks and future regulatory developments.

• Improve regulatory service delivery, ensuring documentation, customer requests and technical regulatory support are handled with speed, accuracy and commercial awareness.

• Support the development of faster and more responsive regulatory processes in line with North American market expectations.

• Partner closely with sales, R&D, customer teams and senior leadership to ensure regulatory affairs contributes directly to customer success and business growth.

• Strengthen the role of regulatory affairs as a proactive business partner rather than a siloed support function.

• Contribute to regional and global regulatory projects, ensuring the North American market perspective is represented effectively.

• Support the implementation and development of regulatory systems, tools and processes, ensuring they are practical and fit for the local market.

• Provide clear guidance to internal stakeholders on regulatory pathways, compliance considerations and customer-specific requirements.

• Build strong relationships across local and global teams, balancing regional business needs with global regulatory governance.

• Support succession planning, knowledge transfer and the long-term development of regulatory capability within the organisation.

Key Requirements

• Bachelor’s or master’s degree in Food Science, Chemistry, Regulatory Affairs, Life Sciences, or a related technical discipline.

• Significant experience within regulatory affairs in the flavours industry, with a minimum of 5 years directly connected to flavour regulatory matters.

• Strong understanding of US flavour regulations, FEMA, customer documentation requirements and the regulatory landscape within North America.

• Experience engaging with industry associations, regulatory bodies, legal stakeholders or external advocacy groups preferred.

• Proven people leadership experience, with the ability to manage, develop and motivate regulatory professionals across different levels.

• Strong customer and commercial orientation, with an understanding of how regulatory affairs supports business growth, project execution and customer satisfaction.

• Experience improving regulatory processes, service levels, documentation workflows or team responsiveness.

• Ability to operate effectively within a matrix organisation, balancing local business priorities with global regulatory alignment.

• Strong communication and influencing skills, with the ability to engage senior stakeholders, technical teams, commercial colleagues and external partners.

• Hands-on, proactive leadership style with the ability to build trust, drive change and improve team engagement.

• Strong organisational skills, with the ability to manage multiple priorities across operational, strategic and external-facing activities.

• Ability to work onsite with strong day-to-day presence and engagement with the local team.

• Experience within food ingredients, beverage, flavour systems or adjacent speciality ingredient categories may also be considered where there is clear flavour regulatory exposure.