Skills
Food Scientist Skills & Tools
The technical skills, people skills and tools employers look for in food scientists, and how to build and show them.
What skills do food scientists need?
Food Scientists need technical skills such as food chemistry, product development, and sensory testing, plus people skills like creativity and teamwork. They also use tools such as Lab equipment and Pilot plant equipment.
Technical (hard) skills
- Food chemistry
- Product development
- Sensory testing
- Food safety
- Shelf-life testing
- Scale-up
People (soft) skills
- Creativity
- Teamwork
- Curiosity
- Communication
Tools, equipment and technology
- Lab equipment
- Pilot plant equipment
- Texture analyzers
- pH meters
- Formulation software
- Statistical software
Skills in action: common tasks
These step-by-step guides show how food scientists put their skills to work:
- How to run a sensory taste test
- How to design a shelf-life study
- How to scale a recipe from bench to plant
How to show these skills on a resume
- Lead your skills section with the technical skills from the job posting, for example, “Food chemistry” and “Product development.”
- Prove soft skills with results: instead of listing “creativity,” describe a situation where you used it.
- List credentials such as CFS near the top, with the issuing organization and date.
- Use the employer’s vocabulary. Our food scientist glossary covers the terms hiring managers expect.
How to build these skills
Formal training, supervised practice and certification are the most direct routes. Our Food Scientist training introduces each of these skills with plain-language lessons, procedures and a final knowledge check: a strong foundation before hands-on training or your first day.