Senior Regulatory Food Specialist

We're Hiring: Senior Regulatory Food Specialist

Location: United Arab Emirates (Remote)

Employment Type: Full-Time

Experience Level: Senior

Work Arrangement: Fully Remote

About Us

We are a globally focused organization committed to delivering safe, compliant, high-quality food products across diverse markets. Our teams combine Food Science, Quality, Regulatory Affairs, Product Development, Supply Chain, Procurement, Operations, Packaging, Marketing, and Commercial expertise to ensure food products meet applicable legal, regulatory, safety, labeling, and market requirements.

Our regulatory teams work closely with internal stakeholders, suppliers, laboratories, certification bodies, and government authorities to interpret evolving food regulations, manage compliance risks, support product launches, and maintain robust regulatory controls throughout the product lifecycle.

The Role

We are seeking an experienced Senior Regulatory Food Specialist to lead food regulatory compliance, product assessments, labeling reviews, regulatory submissions, ingredient evaluations, claims substantiation, and market-entry activities.

The ideal candidate will combine strong knowledge of food regulations and standards with analytical, documentation, project-management, and stakeholder-management capabilities to ensure products, ingredients, packaging, labels, claims, and food-related processes comply with applicable requirements across relevant markets.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and implement food regulatory strategies aligned with business, product, and market objectives.
• Monitor applicable food laws, regulations, standards, guidance, codes, and regulatory developments.
• Interpret regulatory requirements and translate them into practical product, labeling, packaging, and operational requirements.
• Conduct regulatory assessments for new and existing food products.
• Review product formulations, recipes, ingredients, additives, processing aids, and specifications for regulatory compliance.
• Assess the regulatory status and permitted use of food ingredients across target markets.
• Evaluate novel ingredients, emerging food technologies, functional ingredients, and specialty food components.
• Review ingredient documentation including specifications, certificates, technical data, safety information, and supplier declarations.
• Identify regulatory risks associated with ingredients, formulations, manufacturing processes, and product claims.
• Provide regulatory guidance to Research & Development, Product Development, Quality, Procurement, Marketing, Packaging, and Commercial teams.
• Support new-product development from concept through formulation, validation, registration, launch, and post-launch maintenance.
• Conduct regulatory feasibility assessments for new product concepts and market opportunities.
• Determine applicable product classifications, regulatory categories, and approval requirements.
• Coordinate regulatory submissions, registrations, notifications, approvals, permits, and product dossiers where required.
• Prepare and review regulatory documentation for submission to relevant authorities.
• Maintain product registration records, regulatory files, submission histories, approval documentation, and correspondence.
• Coordinate responses to regulatory authority questions, requests for clarification, and additional documentation.
• Manage regulatory commitments and ensure submissions and responses are completed within required timelines.
• Review food labels for compliance with applicable labeling laws and standards.
• Assess ingredient declarations, allergen declarations, nutrition information, net contents, country-of-origin statements, storage instructions, preparation instructions, warnings, and mandatory statements.
• Review product names, descriptions, classifications, and other consumer-facing information for regulatory compliance.
• Evaluate nutrition, health, quality, sustainability, origin, composition, and other product claims.
• Assess claim substantiation requirements and coordinate supporting scientific or technical evidence.
• Review advertising, promotional, digital, packaging, and marketing materials for regulatory compliance.
• Establish regulatory requirements for food packaging, materials, symbols, mandatory statements, and packaging claims.
• Coordinate with Packaging and Design teams to ensure compliant artwork and packaging content.
• Review packaging artwork and approve regulatory elements before production or market release.
• Maintain regulatory label specifications and approved artwork records.
• Monitor regulatory changes affecting food labeling, ingredients, additives, allergens, contaminants, nutrition, claims, packaging, and product safety.
• Conduct regulatory impact assessments when laws, standards, or guidance change.
• Communicate regulatory changes to relevant internal stakeholders and develop implementation plans.
• Maintain regulatory databases, legislation trackers, standards libraries, and regulatory intelligence resources.
• Conduct regulatory gap assessments and develop corrective-action plans.
• Support internal audits, customer audits, certification audits, and regulatory inspections.
• Provide regulatory documentation and technical responses during audits and inspections.
• Coordinate with Quality and Food Safety teams on regulatory non-conformities, complaints, incidents, recalls, and corrective actions.
• Support food-safety incident investigations where regulatory assessment or authority communication is required.
• Assess regulatory requirements for product withdrawals, recalls, market corrections, and safety notifications.
• Support crisis-management teams during significant food-safety or regulatory events.
• Evaluate supplier regulatory documentation and compliance declarations.
• Work with Procurement and Supplier Quality teams to establish regulatory requirements for raw materials, ingredients, packaging, and finished products.
• Review supplier certificates, declarations, specifications, allergen statements, GMO statements, origin information, and other compliance documentation.
• Support supplier qualification and regulatory due-diligence activities.
• Coordinate with accredited laboratories and external technical specialists on regulatory testing and analytical requirements.
• Assess laboratory reports and test results against applicable regulatory limits and requirements.
• Evaluate requirements relating to contaminants, residues, microbiological criteria, heavy metals, toxins, pesticides, veterinary-drug residues, and other regulated parameters.

Key Performance Indicators

• Regulatory submission on-time rate
• Product registration success rate
• Regulatory approval turnaround time
• Regulatory submission accuracy
• Regulatory query response time
• Regulatory authority response compliance
• Product regulatory compliance rate
• Label compliance rate
• Packaging compliance rate
• Regulatory artwork approval turnaround time
• Product launch regulatory readiness
• Market-entry approval performance
• Regulatory change implementation timeliness
• Regulatory gap-closure rate
• Regulatory audit compliance
• Regulatory inspection performance
• Regulatory non-conformity rate
• Regulatory corrective-action closure
• Product claim compliance
• Claims substantiation completeness
• Ingredient regulatory assessment turnaround time
• Ingredient compliance rate
• Supplier regulatory-document compliance
• Supplier declaration completeness
• Raw-material regulatory compliance
• Allergen-labeling accuracy
• Nutrition-labeling accuracy
• Product classification accuracy
• Regulatory database accuracy
• Regulatory documentation completeness
• Regulatory record-maintenance compliance
• Regulatory renewal completion
• Regulatory deadline adherence
• Regulatory risk identification
• Regulatory risk mitigation effectiveness
• Regulatory training completion
• Regulatory stakeholder satisfaction
• External consultant performance
• Laboratory regulatory-testing turnaround time
• Regulatory project budget adherence
• Regulatory process efficiency
• Regulatory automation adoption
• Market-expansion regulatory readiness
• Product recall regulatory-response performance
• Regulatory intelligence reporting timeliness
• Continuous-improvement implementation

Ideal Candidate

The successful candidate should have strong experience in food regulatory affairs, food compliance, food science, food safety, product compliance, labeling, regulatory consulting, or food-industry quality and regulatory management, preferably within food manufacturing, FMCG, ingredients, retail, food service, consumer products, food import/export, or international food businesses.

The candidate should demonstrate:

• Proven experience managing food regulatory compliance across products and markets.
• Strong knowledge of food laws, regulations, standards, codes, and regulatory guidance.
• Strong understanding of food ingredients, additives, processing aids, formulations, and product classifications.
• Experience reviewing food formulations and determining regulatory compliance.
• Strong experience with food labeling and packaging compliance.
• Knowledge of ingredient declarations, allergen labeling, nutrition information, mandatory statements, and country-of-origin requirements.
• Experience assessing nutrition, health, quality, sustainability, or other food-related claims.
• Strong understanding of claim substantiation and scientific evidence requirements.
• Experience preparing regulatory submissions, product registrations, notifications, or approval dossiers.
• Strong ability to interpret regulatory requirements and translate them into practical business actions.
• Experience managing regulatory requirements across multiple countries or jurisdictions.
• Knowledge of international food standards and regulatory frameworks is highly desirable.
• Strong understanding of food-safety regulations and their interaction with regulatory compliance.