Food Science Manager

About Lyka:

Lyka was founded in 2018 by Anna Podolsky, inspired by her dog, Lyka, who was suffering from chronic health issues despite being on "premium" kibble. Together with Gabriel Guedes (COO) and Dr. Matthew Muir (Integrative Veterinarian), they built Lyka from the ground up with one core belief: better food can radically improve a pet's healthspan and quality of life.

Lyka's meals are vet-formulated and gently cooked from real food ingredients. Delivered via a flexible subscription model, Lyka meals have driven remarkable improvements for tens of thousands of customers, supporting gut health, reducing intolerances, improving energy and mobility, and even promoting hair growth.

What began as home-cooked meals has since scaled into one of Australia's fastest-growing consumer companies, a vertically integrated, tech-enabled brand that is transforming pet health nationwide.

Lyka now operates from two offices, Sydney (HQ) and Melbourne, with three state-of-the-art food production facilities (two in Sydney, one in Melbourne) and a growing national footprint.

At Lyka, we're not just selling pet food—we're pioneering a new standard of wellness for pets. With strong product-market fit, deep customer love, and a track record of rapid growth, we're now entering our most ambitious chapter yet: building a generational brand and category-defining business with global impact.

At Lyka, we're reimagining pet food to help dogs live their healthiest, happiest lives. As our Food Science Senior Manager, you'll play a key role in shaping the future of our recipes, combining scientific rigour with innovation to create food that truly makes a difference. You'll lead new product development and continuous improvement initiatives from concept to commercialisation, bringing together your technical expertise, creativity, and leadership to elevate the quality, safety, and performance of our products.

What you will do:

You'll lead the charge in developing and optimising both new and existing formulations, from hands-on bench trials through to full-scale manufacturing.

You'll take a portfolio-wide view of continuous improvement, spotting opportunities that lift palatability, nutritional value, and operational efficiency.

A big part of your role will be bringing new product lines to life in new markets, balancing customer needs, nutrition, cost, and operational feasibility.

You'll manage the full lifecycle of product development, keeping communication clear and stakeholders aligned across Marketing, Procurement, QA, and Manufacturing.

You'll support the Food Technology team in evaluating new ingredients, technologies, and processes that enhance product quality, nutrition, and safety, all while staying true to the Lyka brand ethos.

Working closely with Manufacturing and CAPEX teams, you'll help define new equipment specs, process standards, and SOPs that deliver consistent results.

You'll deploy Food Technologist resources effectively across projects, ensuring priorities align with company goals.

And as a leader, you'll coach and mentor junior scientists, building a culture of collaboration, high performance, and continuous learning.

Requirements

What we're looking for:

You'll bring a strong foundation in Food Science or Food Technology, backed by a degree in a related field and over six years of hands-on product development experience. You've successfully led technical projects or teams and have a proven track record of taking evergreen products from concept to commercialisation, ideally within pet food, human food, or the meat industry.

Your deep understanding of food processing, ingredient functionality, and nutritional formulation means you can solve complex challenges and make confident, data-informed decisions. You're a natural leader who thrives on mentoring others and building high-performing teams.

You're also a strong communicator, able to translate between science, operations, and business to keep everyone aligned. Independent and proactive by nature, you're driven to find solutions, not roadblocks, and you're passionate about innovation, continuous improvement, and delivering products that truly make a difference.

Benefits

• Work in a fast-growing start-up, experiencing what goes behind the scenes to sustain hyper-growth for a start-up with a physical product
• Growth and Development – Lyka is growing extremely quickly, which means you will have the opportunity to experience different challenges every day and progressively acquire more responsibilities as our facility and team expand. We provide an annual L&D budget for you to continue your personal development.
• Work for a sustainability-focused company – we care about the health of our dogs and our planet. We're proud to be Australia's only carbon-negative and plastic-negative pet wellness company and we're always looking at ways for us to improve sustainability practices.
• Be part of a diverse top-talent team, coming from widely different backgrounds and geographies.
• Up to 18 weeks of paid parental leave top-up
• Wellbeing assistance and tools to take care of your mental and physical wellbeing so you can do your best work.
• Flexible working: work from where you get your best work done. We have pet-friendly offices and industrial kitchens in Sydney and Melbourne.
• Pupper parent support to care for your furry friends – flexible arrangements for new pets, pet-friendly offices, discounts, and financial allowance for dog training and care to help them live their best life

We are committed to building inclusive and diverse teams

Lyka is an equal-opportunity employer devoted to providing a working environment that embraces and values diversity and inclusion. We celebrate diversity, are devoted to creating an inclusive environment for all staff and encourage people of all backgrounds to apply. If you have any support or access requirements, we encourage you to advise us at the time of application.