Senior Product Development Manager - 12 Month FTC in High Wycombe

Want to help us bring happiness to the world? Want to join an ambitious and fast growing global biscuits and confectionery business investing heavily in iconic global brands, infrastructure and people? Then this is the place for you. As proud bakers and chocolatiers and custodians of iconic global brands, we don’t compromise on the quality of ingredients in our products or on the people we hire. We are looking for entrepreneurial spirits who share our passion for bringing happiness to our consumers and who embody our Winning Traits.

To succeed at pladis you need to be purpose-led, resilient and positive because we expect pace and agility, insist on collaboration and demand accountability. If that is your thing, then pladis offers global ambition, a clear Vision and roadmap for success, challenge, and unrivalled opportunities to learn and make an impact.

Context and role purpose: pladis operates in highly competitive, fast-moving markets where it is essential to maintain and extend market share through profitable branded growth. Successful innovation through product development, continuous value improvement and consumer perceived quality superiority vs. the competition are critical.

This is a critical role responsible for building opportunities to explore, develop and implement protocepts to prototypes to fit concepts that will drive brand strategies across multiple geographies. They will work closely with marketing teams to activate and bring to reality technical briefs. They will support the Breakthrough Product Director in the delivery against an ambitious and transformational breakthrough product strategy that is aligned to the growth ambition and sustainability aspirations of the company.

The role requires an individual who is competent and skilled at working across cultures and functions and collaborating to deliver with others. They need to be able to work effectively with both internal and external partners to identify appropriate opportunities and drive development of innovative solutions, best practice approaches and systems.

Key areas of focus for this secondment role will be:

• Managing the development and the Global Savoury Expansion initiative – with an aim of growing the pladis portfolio in new and existing markets: working closely with both global commercial and regional R&D teams while employing strong technical project management.
• Leading initiatives to unlock future technologies by applying both strong product and process knowledge to build scale platforms for innovation. This will include prototyping, planning and executing trials in both pilot plants and production facilities, identifying process requirements.
• Defining and delivering technical concepts into product development.
• Developing solutions to technical hurdles.
• Providing a technical response to commercial briefs.
• Owning and delivering bench samples and pilot/factory trials.
• Managing trial budgets and project plans.

The ideal candidate will have excellent core technical skills, strong understanding and experience in product development and managing such projects/programs, a good understanding of process/chemical engineering principles and be able to understand the needs of the business, our consumers and customers to drive an exciting product agenda. You will be a self-starter, possess a drive for results.

pladis organization model is based on 8 regions with full accountability of their own P&L:

• Global
• UK & Ireland
• Europe & Emerging Markets (EEM)
• Turkey, Central Asia (TRCA)
• Middle East, North Africa (MENA)
• North America (NAM)
• Asia Pacific (APAC)
• Godiva (Global)

Global R&D works hand in hand on many initiatives with partners in the other functions (both globally and within regions) to create strong competitive advantages for pladis including:

• Product Innovation
• Identification and unlocking of future technologies
• Portfolio transformation for Health and Happiness
• Sustainability (i.e. environment-friendly initiatives)
• Transformational Productivity, through product reformulation

Specifically on Breakthrough product, we need to:

• Define and deliver a medium to long term roadmap and align an agenda to drive innovation, sustainability and productivity – build the internal cross-functional expertise and relationships to deliver that agenda.
• Build strong collaborative relationships with Suppliers to capture the best practices on the market and monitor project implementation.
• Build strong collaborative relationships with regional teams to build opportunities which scale across multiple regions.

The position will report to the Head of Innovation for the Savoury category. It is expected that the incumbent will work very closely with their counterparts across the Central Innovation & Technology team, as well as the Global commercial team to effectively deliver the joint growth and transformation agenda and ensure balanced focus on deliverables.

Principle Accountabilities:

• Manage and be accountable for all technical aspects of product design and deliver developments across all global regions/markets as required by the project, meeting the quality, cost and timings encouraged.
• Collaborate with others to build and deliver appropriate solutions to defined technical hurdles.
• Provide a technical response to the commercial brief.
• Input technical detail into Stage & Gate process then translate this into a Product Development Programme up to Development stage.
• Identify technical hurdles, compile technical risk assessment and contingencies and project manage projects including issues.
• Ensure timely completion of project documentation, monitoring and acting upon it accordingly.
• Ensure technical gates are completed at each stage plus ensure the completion of ingredient specs, product specs, HARA, and product quality attributes delegating tasks to project team as appropriate.
• Overall responsibility for the development of bench samples, planning and running pilot plant and factory trials (pladis and Suppliers), and presentation of samples to marketing and other stakeholders.
• Ensure that all work is carried out in a safe and hygienic manner, following factory or bakery GMPs.
• Regular review trial's budget for a project and the associated phased spend ensuring regular update of cost tracking spreadsheet and reviewing with line manager.
• Draw up product specs to final status ensuring effective handover of the development to the regional Categories Product Development Teams.
• Contribution to regional pladis Innovation strategy through support of conceptualisation and proactive NPD.
• Manage, empower and mentor subordinates, so their personal and technical development needs are identified and acted upon.
• Be a role model for the team promoting high standards of work, and behaviours.
• Work with colleagues to ensure that product development facilities are maintained to a safe and hygienic standard and operate using lean principles.
• Drive for continuous improvement.
• Ensure that personal development plans are built, kept current and actioned as appropriate.
• Use breadth of experience to act as a technical mentor across the team to ensure mitigation of risk to execution of projects.
• Propose and manage resource requirements.
• Have technical ownership for several products/brands.

pladis is an Equal Opportunity Employer, committed to hiring a diverse workforce. All openings will be filled based on qualifications without regard to race, colour, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, marital status, veteran status, disability, age, religion or any other classification protected by law.

We operate a strict Preferred Supplier List. If you are a recruitment agency and wish to submit candidates to be considered for this vacancy, you must have agreed to, and signed, our terms of business. We will not accept CVs from any other sources other than those currently on our PSL. We will not pay a fee for any candidate that has not been represented by a provider on our PSL.