Overview
Flavourist Jobs in City of Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa at The Chirandu Group
Title: Flavourist
Company: The Chirandu Group
Location: City of Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa
Flavourist
Business Unit: Chirandu Botanica
Location: Cape Town, South Africa (with periodic fieldwork and partner-site travel)
Reporting to: Head of Chirandu Botanica
Contract Type: Project-based role with a pathway to permanent full-time appointment, subject to performance and business needs.
About Chirandu Botanica
Chirandu Botanica is the research, development, and applied science arm of The Chirandu Group. We transform Africa’s indigenous botanicals and flavour systems into commercially relevant ingredients, products, and applications.
Our work begins with scientific characterisation. We document provenance, build sensory and flavour dossiers, and understand the chemistry and behaviour of each botanical. From there, we develop the knowledge and applications that allow partners to use these ingredients with confidence.
We are building this capability from the ground up. The people who join now will help define the systems, standards, and products that shape the future of Botanica.
Role Purpose
The Flavourist is where Botanica’s science becomes a product.
You take characterised botanicals and flavour systems and develop them into applications that partners can use across beverages, spirits, teas, dairy, and other priority categories.
Your role is to prove that an ingredient works in a product, document how it behaves in application, and ensure those insights flow back into the library so that every project strengthens the value of the institution.
This role sits between flavour development and applied food science. It is for someone who enjoys building, testing, refining, and turning knowledge into commercially relevant products.
Key Responsibilities
Flavour Development
- Develop botanicals and flavour systems into application-ready expressions that remain faithful to the original material’s sensory identity.
- Build, balance, and refine flavour so the botanical character is carried through formulation rather than diluted or lost in translation.
- Apply trained sensory and olfactory judgement to guide development, supported by analytical data, sensory briefs, and application constraints.
- Define use rates, standardisation protocols, and cost-in-use parameters to ensure consistency, scalability, and commercial viability.
- Translate characterised research and sensory profiles into flavour systems suitable for deployment across priority product categories.
- Document formulation outcomes, application performance, and sensory learnings so each project strengthens the Botanica knowledge library and informs future work.
Application and Proof
- Validate flavour performance in finished applications across four priority pathways, accounting for matrix-specific behaviour: aqueous and acidified RTD systems, spirit dilution and extraction, tea infusion dynamics, and fat/protein/thermal stability in dairy.
- Develop bench prototypes and conduct dosing, stability, and sensory performance testing appropriate to each matrix.
- Co-develop with commercial partners where active programmes exist, translating briefs into working, validated applications.
- Record both performance and limitation. Understanding where a system does not perform is as commercially valuable as success.
Documentation and Library Contribution
- Document botanical and flavour system behaviour in application to a consistent standard, including matrix translation, dosing, stability, sensory expression, and provenance.
- Conduct sensory evaluation of each botanical in application against its neat profile, feeding insights back into the source dossier to refine and strengthen it.
- Maintain the application intelligence layer of each dossier so that all learnings compound into a structured, reusable institutional asset rather than isolated project outputs.
Commercial Contribution
- Equip origination works with validated applications that enable Botanica to lead commercial discussions with evidence rather than hypothesis.
- Support technical engagement with partners and licensing stakeholders, including global flavour and fragrance houses, through reference samples and application data.
- Identify cross-matrix behavioural patterns across botanicals to inform prioritisation of future demonstrators and development pathways.
Who We Are Looking For
Embodied Cultural Knowledge of African Food Systems
You have lived experience of African food systems and an intuitive understanding of how indigenous ingredients behave sensorially and structurally. You can recognise when an application preserves or distorts that integrity.
Applied Flavour Craft and Matrix Ridge
You can translate a characterised botanical into a stable, usable expression and validate it in finished applications. You move fluidly between creative formulation and the technical constraints of real-world food systems, across multiple categories.
Documentation Discipline
You treat documentation as core output, not administrative work. Every prototype generates structured, consistent records because only documented knowledge compounds into a usable system.
Entrepreneurial Orientation and Ownership
You are comfortable operating in an emerging capability space where systems are still being defined. You take initiative, connect technical work to commercial outcomes, and engage constructively with ambiguity.
Fidelity to the Indigenous Signature
Performance in application must never come at the expense of botanical integrity. Technical optimisation cannot flatten origin, character, or cultural specificity. Preserving the indigenous signature is the governing constraint across all work.
Required Experience and Background
Academic Qualifications
- A Bachelor’s degree is required. Relevant disciplines include Food Science, Food Technology, Flavour Science or Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Sensory Science, or a closely related field.
- Classical flavourist or formal flavour-house training is welcome but not required, and is valued only where it has not displaced an instinct for indigenous sensory character.
- A postgraduate qualification is advantageous but not required. Strong applied experience will be considered in its place.
Technical Skills
- Demonstrable flavour development capability: the ability to build and balance a flavour, not only to analyse one.
- Applications experience in one or more of beverage, spirits, tea, or dairy matrices, with the range and willingness to work across all four.
- Working knowledge of extraction and material handling, dosing and cost-in-use, and stability and shelf-life testing.
- Competence in sensory evaluation methodology and the discipline to document outcomes to a consistent technical standard.
- Awareness of food safety and flavour regulatory frameworks, including allergens and flavour regulatory status. Familiarity with access and benefit-sharing and provenance requirements is an advantage.
Experience
- Roughly three to six years of relevant experience in flavour development, applications, food and beverage product development, or a related field. We optimise for capability and cultural rootedness over years served; strong applied candidates with fewer years will be considered.
- A track record of converting raw or characterised material into working, proven applications.
- Experience working with natural and botanical materials is a strong advantage.
- Experience contributing to commercial or partner-facing technical outputs is advantageous.
What This Role Is Not
- Not a sensory science or lexicon development role; that sits with the Sensory Translation Scientist.
- Not an analytical chemistry or experimental design role; that sits with the R&D Scientist.
- Not a consumer research or preference testing role.
- Not about executing fixed templates or following recipes, the role is about finding the route to flavour expression.
- Not work where undocumented outputs have value; the proof record is a core part of the work itself.
How To Apply
Send your CV and a short covering note to [email protected] with the subject line: Flavourist Application.
Your covering note should respond to the following question in no more than 300 words: Choose an indigenous African botanical you know well and explain how you would carry its character faithfully into one of our priority pathways, RTD, spirits, tea, or dairy. We are not looking for a recipe, but for how you think about translating a raw sensory truth into a finished application without losing its integrity in the process.
Shortlisted candidates will be invited to complete a practical flavour and application assessment prior to interview.
