Range Innovation Manager – Dry Category (August/September start)
We’re Tails.com, a dog food subscription company with a big difference. We create truly tailored food for each dog we serve, using information from a brief questionnaire to develop a unique recipe that delivers the nutrition and taste dogs love, delivered monthly.
Founded as a new category in pet food and backed by Purina, we are scaling fast. We value testing, learning quickly, and celebrating successes while learning from failures.
The Role
Seeking a product and innovation leader to own the development, optimisation and commercial performance of the Tails.com range. You will shape, drive and deliver New Product Development (NPD) and Existing Product Development (EPD) projects from insight to post-launch review, ensuring products meet customer needs, strengthen the brand and drive growth. The role requires clear judgement, pace, accountability and leadership across cross‑functional teams and supplier partners.
You Will Be Responsible For
Product Development and Ownership
- Own end‑to‑end delivery of NPD and EPD projects, ensuring clarity of scope, timelines and commercial outcomes.
- Lead the cross‑functional project team, setting direction and driving progress through each stage gate.
- Build strong briefs grounded in customer insight, behavioural data and commercial sizing.
- Make informed trade‑offs to balance customer value, cost, claims and operational feasibility.
- Track performance post launch and use learnings to refine the pipeline.
Supplier Leadership
- Lead development with suppliers, setting clear expectations and holding them to agreed timelines, costs and quality standards.
- Identify the right partners for each project and build productive, high‑trust relationships.
- Drive accountability with suppliers through clear communication, structured feedback and proactive issue management.
Claims, Customer Benefit and Messaging
- Build a strong understanding of the claims landscape and category language.
- Shape the claims and customer benefit strategy for products in development, ensuring they are meaningful, differentiated and legally sound.
- Work closely with the Regulatory and Compliance Manager to test, challenge and refine claims in line with the IRAQ process.
Food Philosophy and Range Values
- Ensure all development aligns with the Tails.com Food Philosophy and product range values.
- Work with the Animal Nutritionist to identify emerging ingredients, technologies or processes that can advance product quality or differentiation.
- Maintain and evolve the range values with the Head of Range Innovation and Brand Director.
Issue Resolution and Rapid Response
- Lead fast, practical solutions when product issues arise, including shortages and quality concerns.
- Make clear recommendations on remediation, balancing customer needs, cost and operational complexity.
- Capture lessons and ensure they feed into future briefs.
The Skills You’ll Bring
- Strong ownership mindset with a bias for action.
- Clear judgement in ambiguous situations, able to simplify and decide.
- Commercial awareness and experience building business cases.
- Confident communicator able to influence senior, technical and non‑technical colleagues.
- Able to challenge constructively and push for better solutions.
- Builds trusted relationships with suppliers and internal teams.
- Comfortable leading work at pace and managing competing priorities.
- Measures of success: on‑time delivery of NPD and EPD projects; commercial impact of new and improved products; customer benefit demonstrated through claims, quality and experience; strength and clarity of the product pipeline; supplier performance and reliability; positive cross‑functional feedback on leadership and ownership.
What's in it for you
- Competitive salary, reviewed annually.
- Flexible core hours, giving you true work‑life balance.
- Hybrid role: employees should have a conducive remote working environment (including an appropriate desk and adjustable chair) at their start date.
- 25 days of holiday (excluding bank holidays) which increases over time to a maximum of 27 days.
- 9‑10 day working week to enhance your wellbeing without a reduction in pay and leave allowance.
- Optional 5 days unpaid leave and 1 paid volunteer day each year.
- Work from abroad 2 weeks every 6 months.
- Health insurance for you, paid by Tails.com.
- Extended maternity, paternity, shared parental and adoption pay: 6 months at 70% pay.
- Flexible paid care leave to support immediate dependants, people close to you and pets.
- In‑house L&D team, with access to year‑round courses to help drive your development.
- 50% discount on all Tails.com products.
- Discounted gym membership.
Our Commitment
We’re proud to be an active equal‑opportunity employer. We conduct a structured recruitment process for all candidates and actively promote our roles to communities that are under‑represented at Tails.com. During your interview process you’ll meet team members with varying levels of responsibility and experience. If you need any reasonable adjustments, please let us know.
