Product Design & Development Intern

Are you curious how ingredients and processing conditions shape the quality of Specialized Nutrition products? Do you enjoy turning scientific questions into hypotheses and testing them in the lab and the pilot plant? And would you like your research to help shape products that support people at key moments in life? Then this internship is for you! We have an exciting opportunity as a Product Design & Development Intern.

• Research & Innovation
• Netherlands
• Utrecht
• Hybrid
• Temporary Full-Time

About the job

Our team designs and improves Specialized Nutrition products for consumers and patients around the world. These products are complex systems in which many ingredients interact during processing and over time. This internship is a unique opportunity to learn how research is done in an industrial setting. Working side by side with experienced scientists and product developers, you will help the team carry out research and translate the findings into improvements to our products.

You’ll be part of the Specialized Nutrition R&I team, and your key responsibilities are:

1. Knowledge building: gathering and reviewing internal and external knowledge relevant to the project.
2. Research design: defining research questions and hypotheses, and planning the experiments to answer them.
3. Execution: carrying out experiments in the lab and the pilot plant.
4. Data analysis: interpreting results, drawing conclusions and proposing improvements.
5. Knowledge sharing: documenting methods and learnings (e.g. SOPs) and presenting results to stakeholders, ending with a final presentation and report.

You will work closely with the Product Design & Development team, the Process & Technology team and the analytical labs.

About you

• Background in food colloids, food science or technology, dairy science, physical chemistry, chemical engineering or a related field
• Interest in ingredient interactions, food structure and how formulation and processing affect product quality
• Hands-on lab experience
• Analytical mindset and experience with data analysis; experience with design of experiments or statistics is a plus
• Structured and able to plan your work independently
• Proactive, curious and creative

Key requirements:

• Enrolled as a Bachelor's or Master's student for the entire duration of the internship.
• Resident of the Netherlands with a valid BSN number. Non-EU citizens must have a valid Dutch residency permit.
• For non-EU citizens, your university must sign a three-party agreement with Danone.
• Available to start in February 2027 for a minimum of 6 months, 5 days per week.
• Fluent in English (spoken and written).
• Able to work from our Utrecht office at least 3 days per week.

We offer

• A competitive gross internship allowance of 650 euros per month (based on a full-time internship);
• Home working allowance of 2.45 euros per day;
• A public transport travel card covering all office-related travel;
• Career advice opportunities such as workshops, seminars, networking events;
• International environment with 140 different nationalities in Danone NL;
• Active Internship community with 100+ interns across the Netherlands.

In the Netherlands we also offer a hybrid working environment which enables each team to meet our people's desire for flexibility. You can work from one of our People Hubs in Hoofddorp, Utrecht and Rijswijk or you can work from home.