Role Overview:

The R&D; Dairy Microbiologist will work closely with the R&D; Dairy Technologist and production team.

The role will focus on culture selection, fermentation, microbiological testing, contmination control, shelf-life validation and probiotic viability during product development and commercial scale-up.

This is a full-time, on-site position in Nellore. Candidates must be willing to relocate and work from Nellore.

Key Responsibilities:
- Select and evaluate starter and probiotic cultures for yogurt, frozen yogurt and fermented dairy products.
- Conduct microbiological testing of raw materials, water, cultures, trial batches and finished products.
- Perform equipment, production-area and environmental microbiological monitoring.
- Plan shelf-life, culture-viability, storage-stability and freezethaw studies.
- Investigate contamination and microbiological failures and recommend corrective and preventive actions.
- Support product trials and production scale-up while developing SOPs, sampling plans and hygiene programmes.

Required Skills and Qualifications:
- M.Sc.



in Microbiology, Food Microbiology, Dairy Microbiology, Biotechnology or a related fileds.
- 3-7 years of microbiology experience in dairy, yogurt, fermented foods, ice cream or frozen desserts.
- Practical knowledge of starter cultures, probiotics, yeast, mould, coliforms and foodborne pathogens.
- Hands-on experience with total plate count, yeast and mould, coliform, pathogen and culture-enumeration testing.
- Experience conducting shelf-life studies, environmental monitoring and contamination investigations.
- Ability to independently plan experiments, interpret results and support production scale-up.

Valuable to Have:
- Experience with frozen yogurt, probiotic dairy products, ice cream or frozen desserts.
- Knowledge of probiotic survival during freezing, frozen storage and shelf life.
- Experience selecting and optimising starter or probiotic cultures.
- Exposure to challenge studies, PCR,

📌 R&D Dairy Microbiologist (Nellore)
🏢 Maharudra Group
📍 Nellore