Senior Insights Manager

Senior Insights Manager to lead and deliver the insights agenda for UK and Europe brands, including our cheese snacking brand Strings & Things. The consumer dairy business relaunched as Kinisla, focusing on future-fit dairy brands created with consumers at heart. This is a newly created role within an expanding function, delivering insights to unlock growth opportunities. Reporting to the Insights Lead, this role will create and own a consumer-centric insights programme to unlock growth for the portfolio. Insights leadership is a key driver of commercial growth, advancing Kinisla's ambition through consumer and insights centricity. This is a hybrid role with 2 days per week in Staines offices (Tuesday & Wednesday) and occasional travel to partners in London and sites across Ireland and the UK. We will consider someone based in Naas, Ireland, though it would require significant travel to the UK on a regular basis.

About Kinisla: Kinisla is a vertically integrated farm-to-fork business with a substantial consumer foods presence and a leading nutritional and dairy ingredients division, delivering high-quality dairy solutions with a focus on sustainability and innovation. From partnering with local family farms to producing world-class dairy products, we ensure every step of our value chain reflects our commitment to excellence. With over 50 years' experience in milk processing, dairy and nutritional technology advancement, and product innovation, we are a key stakeholder in the global food industry and creators of a strong portfolio of market leading dairy brands including Cheestrings, Charleville and Coleraine Cheese, Dairygold, Golden Cow and our new SMUG range. Our dairy comes from some of the world's richest grazing land and is produced by a network of Irish family farms that have one of the lowest carbon footprints in the world. Through a combination of expertise, innovation, and sustainability, Kinisla is proud to shape the future of dairy while meeting the diverse needs of our farmers, customers, and communities.

Headquartered in Tralee, Co. Kerry, we operate multiple manufacturing facilities in the southwest of Ireland, and manage 29 Farm & Home stores. In Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom, our presence extends to Portadown, Coleraine, and Ossett. Globally, Kinisla employs over 1,600 professionals across Ireland, Northern Ireland, the UK, USA, Netherlands, Spain, Germany, and China. In 2024, turnover was approximately €1.3 billion.

What You'll Be Doing:

• Insights Leadership to drive business growth: focus on international markets across Europe and identifying innovation-led growth spaces; own and lead the insights strategy for existing international markets and future expansion; ensure the innovation strategy is based on a relentless consumer-first mindset; leverage emerging trends to identify new opportunities; deliver insights that translate into commercial success.
• Consumer centricity: champion the voice of the consumer and influence stakeholders at all levels; demonstrate resilience and conviction to keep the consumer voice central to decision-making; showcase impact through day-to-day engagement and formal presentations.
• Commercial and brand impact: translate commercial challenges into clear, strategic insight briefs; apply commercial acumen to devise insight programmes that deliver tangible commercial answers; balance assertiveness with collaboration to maintain a consumer-first focus within a commercially driven environment; act as a catalyst for innovation success through agile insights.
• Thought leadership and capability: articulate complex challenges into clear, strategically robust insight briefs with defined KPIs; stay current with trends, methodologies and ways of working to enhance impact; embed consumer centricity across functions, collaborating with commercial and R&D teams; continually appraise and challenge ways of working to elevate insights capability and impact; leverage systems and technologies such as AI to enhance delivery and dissemination.
• Success criteria: insight programmes that shape strategy and execution; reduction of commercial risk in investment and launch plans; insights that unlock new growth spaces and market entry opportunities; strong stakeholder confidence and alignment to insights agenda; increased visibility of the insights function.

What You Can Bring To The Role:

• Significant experience in a consumer insights role with a proven track record of delivering actionable insights that drive commercial growth.
• Experience across geographies: Europe, US and Asia.
• Experience of driving and supporting innovation from ideation to launch.
• Strong analytical rigour across a broad range of research methodologies, both quantitative and qualitative, including self-serve and agency management.
• Knowledge of leveraging AI and technology to drive efficiency and effectiveness.
• Background in branded FMCG, ideally within dairy or chilled categories.
• Strategic thinker with the ability to simplify complexity; influential across functions and leadership teams.
• Highly autonomous and driven, with the ability to operate at pace; comfortable with ambiguity.
• Collaborative team player, decisive and outcome-focused; agile thinker, able to adapt and pivot in a fast-paced environment.
• Willing to challenge the status quo and take initiative; demonstrates curiosity, resilience and a strong drive to learn and grow.

What We Can Offer:

At Kinisla we offer opportunities to make a difference. We are a team committed to solving global food challenges with a fresh approach. We offer:

• 25 days annual leave (excluding bank holidays).
• Health care.
• Matched pension scheme.
• Benefits platform offering discounts and cashback on major retailers.

Get in touch today. Our recruitment, selection and assessment process are based on the skills and competencies of the specific roles and based entirely on merit. We are committed to diversity and inclusion in all recruitment processes and do not discriminate based on protected characteristics.