About CP Herbalist
CP Herbalist is a Cypriot herbal skincare products brand, founded in 2018. In July 2024, we opened our own EU-compliant factory in Limassol (“House of Cosmetic Productions”), licensed by the Cypriot authorities. We are a team of around 30 — most in marketing, e-commerce, sales, and our three physical stores, with a close factory team of eight, and annual sales of about €1.5 million, grown from a standing start in 2018.
We produce all our liquid products in-house. Our creams, serums, gels, and shampoos are currently manufactured for us in bulk on third-party emulsifying machines in Cyprus and Germany — using our own formulations, and with raw materials we supply ourselves to ensure high quality. With the arrival of our new high-specification industrial emulsifying machine, we are now bringing this production fully in-house and building our own formulation, evaluation, and production capability. This role is central to that step.
The role in one sentence
We are looking for a scientist who can formulate, develop, produce, evaluate, improve, and document our cosmetic products — and who also understands industrial emulsifying machines well enough to set their parameters and take a formulation from the laboratory through to full-scale production.
How to understand this role
This is, at its core, a science role. The person’s identity in the company is that of a cosmetics scientist: someone who understands formulations deeply enough to create, judge, improve, and stand behind them with proper documentation. The work is to produce and refine our own products in-house, and over time, to develop genuinely new products from scratch as our range grows.
Our new machine emulsifies to a much finer and more uniform droplet size. This improves texture, stability, skin feel, and overall quality, so a central part of the role is re-engineering our existing formulations to take full advantage of this finer emulsification and elevate the end product.
What makes this role different from a purely laboratory position is that the scientist must also understand production. They understand the industrial emulsifying machine, its operating principles, and its parameters, and can therefore carry out their own scientific work all the way through to a correctly manufactured product. They bridge the gap between the lab and the production line themselves. (The principles of a small laboratory emulsifier and a full-size industrial machine are not the same — understanding that difference, and how to set parameters at production scale, is part of the role.)
The balance of work shifts over time. In the early phase, as we bring all emulsification in-house and our machine operator and production team are being guided, the scientist will be closely involved on the production floor — setting parameters, supervising batches, and ensuring quality. As the production team becomes familiar with the product-specific settings, routine production needs less of the scientist’s attention, and the role concentrates on formulation, evaluation, regulatory documentation, and the development and improvement of products. Each time a new product is introduced, the scientist is again central: developing it, defining its production parameters, and preparing its documentation. It is a varied, multi-tasking role whose emphasis changes with the workload, which is exactly why we need one capable scientist rather than a single-task specialist.
Core responsibilities
1. Formulation and product development
• Develop new products from scratch for our herbal range as it grows, and improve and adapt existing formulations, including evaluating raw materials and actives
• Bring in-house and produce on our own machine, the creams, serums, gels, and shampoos
• Re-engineer existing formulations to exploit the finer, more uniform droplet size of the new machine — improving quality — and diagnose and re-engineer products when the result is not right
2. Emulsification, scale-up, and production
• Understand the operating principles of the industrial emulsifying machine and set the correct parameters for each product (shear, temperature, phase addition, mixing, and cooling times)
• Translate formulations from laboratory scale to pilot and full production scale on the industrial machine
• Set up the production process for each product and run production trials
• During the build-up phase, and whenever a new product is introduced, supervise production on the floor alongside the operator and production team to ensure correct, consistent manufacturing
3. Quality evaluation and control
• Judge whether in-process and finished products meet the standard, combining scientific understanding with practical experience
• When a product is not right, determine whether the cause is the process (machine parameters) or the formulation, and correct accordingly
• Establish and run stability testing and quality-control protocols (accelerated and real-time, challenge testing, pH, viscosity, shelf-life)
4. Regulatory and documentation
• Prepare and maintain the documentation behind each product: manufacturing instructions, Product Information Files (PIF), stability reports, and batch records
• Support compliance with EU Cosmetic Regulation 1223/2009 and CPNP notifications
• Set and maintain raw material specifications and support supplier qualification
5. Projects and mentoring
• Where relevant, contribute to funded research and innovation projects
• Guide and develop our junior chemical engineers, and work closely with the Products Manager and production team
Essential requirements
• Scientific depth: a strong academic background in Cosmetic Science, Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Pharmacy, or a closely related field — sufficient to formulate, develop, evaluate, improve, and re-engineer cosmetic products, and to produce the documentation behind them.
• Production capability: real, hands-on experience with emulsion production — understanding how industrial emulsifying / homogenising equipment works, setting parameters, taking formulations from lab to production scale, and judging and troubleshooting quality on the floor. Laboratory experience alone is not sufficient.
• Practical formulation experience, including building formulations from scratch, as the basis for development, diagnosis, and re-engineering
• Good working English
Advantageous (not required)
• Experience contributing to funded research/innovation projects
• Greek language
What we offer
• Competitive salary, benchmarked to the role and the candidate’s experience
• Relocation support (where applicable): flights, shipping allowance, and housing assistance (see note below)
• Support with Cyprus work permit and residency paperwork for non-EU candidates
• The opportunity to build our formulation and production capability from the ground up, with real autonomy, in a growing and stable family company
Housing note: company-provided housing is a studio next to the factory, suitable for one person (plus an occasional visitor). Candidates relocating with a family would arrange their own family accommodation and should factor this into their salary expectations.
Interested candidates are kindly requested to send their CV to sartemiou@hocp.eu
