Senior NPD Manager in London

We’re looking for a Senior New Product Development (NPD) Manager to join our Innovation Team. This is a permanent, full‑time position based at our London headquarters, with regular travel to our factory in Nuneaton (expenses covered). With the coming together of our two amazing brands – Eat Real and Proper – to create PROPER SNACKS, we’re reinventing snacking as an act of positive well‑being. At the heart of it all is our innovation team: the tastemakers, creators, and guardians of everything we make.

We’re looking to offer someone the opportunity to be a thought‑leader and pioneer in the snack category and develop their career within a rapidly growing business. In our rapidly growing business, we are looking for an experienced NPD professional with the skills and knowledge to lead a team of two, as well as deliver your own end‑to‑end innovation and CI projects.

The Person

Combining a robust, methodical and analytical approach to complex projects with a demonstrable passion for food, you will use your knowledge of ingredients and manufacturing processes to deliver market‑leading products. You will have experience of line managing others, setting challenging objectives and balancing the need for coaching and providing guidance when needed. You have an impressive track record of driving successful NPD product and packaging innovation from ideation to launch, working collaboratively with project management, brand marketing, technical and manufacturing stakeholders.

A brilliant communicator and builder by nature, you’ll take pride in taking ownership of the challenges you encounter, working collaboratively and with flexibility to find solutions to recipe and process challenges that may occur along the way, all while maintaining an enthusiastic and positive mindset.

The Role

Working closely with the Innovation Director and senior‑level stakeholders, you will be responsible for coaching and providing guidance to an NPD Manager and Product Developer to deliver their end‑to‑end development projects. You will also lead the delivery of your own innovation projects and identify and initiate continuous improvement opportunities within the London office to improve NPD processes and ways of working. You will work cross‑functionally with our in‑house manufacturing team, marketing and technical teams as well as external suppliers and third‑party manufacturers to unlock exciting and commercially viable innovation. You’ll primarily be located in London, but we welcome a hybrid approach, with working from home 1‑2 days a week. You will also be expected to do some travelling to our Nuneaton manufacturing site and our suppliers too (travel expenses will be covered).

Responsibilities

• Team Leadership – line managing a team of one NPD Manager and one Product Developer, providing leadership, guidance and coaching
• Ideation – working with Innovation Director, Brand & Commercial teams – you will use your knowledge of food trends and the latest functional ingredients, consumer behaviour and the category landscape to research and ideate new to market flavours and concepts, that align to our overall brand strategy
• Development & Prototyping – utilising your strong relationships with suppliers and stakeholders, you’ll undertake benchmarking, develop detailed food briefs and manage submissions with suppliers and project teams. You’ll design the prototype recipes, setting the quality standards to ensure great taste, nutritional compliance and claims, factory feasibility and commercial viability are all built‑in
• Testing – you will set up shelf‑life testing, analyse data collection and interpretation, run internal and external taste panels and create summaries, reports and recommendations
• Scale‑Up & Validation – working with suppliers and the factory – you’ll plan, oversee, assess and report on trials ensuring the concept can be produced safely and consistently at the right quality standards
• Project Management – driving your projects forward, building the product elements of the Gate documentation following each phase of work. You’ll work with the project management team to flag and mitigate risk to the business using critical paths, commercial insight and factory impact.
• Continuous Improvement – you’ll work closely with your stakeholders in the London headquarters to identify and drive projects to continuously improve our processes and ways of working, implementing change that results in measurable improvements

Requirements

• Senior management experience preferred, line management experience essential
• Degree level qualification in Food Science, Food Technology, Food Manufacturing, or similar at a minimum 2.1 grade or equivalent strongly preferred
• Demonstrable passion for food with sensory training and broad experience in product testing
• Proven experience in delivering multiple, complex projects to brief, on time and in full
• Strong technical expertise in successful product design into scale‑up, validation and launch
• Positive, proactive and relentless, with a flexible, can‑do attitude to problem solving
• A brilliant communicator and collaborator with experience of cross‑functional project delivery
• Confident with the Microsoft Office suite of tools, with particular skills in Excel and PowerPoint

About PS

PROPER SNACKS is the home of PROPER and Eat Real. The UK’s fastest‑growing major snacks company. We’re a diverse team of builders, thinkers, creators and makers – based in London and Nuneaton and serving snackers across Europe. Our brilliant team are united by an insatiable curiosity and driven by an entrepreneurial spirit. At PROPER SNACKS, we don’t sit still. We scale fast, dream big and back our people to make stuff happen. Our values keep us grounded: Be builder. Dream bigger. Seriously fun. You’ll be part of a team shaking up the snacking world.

Our Approach

PROPER and Eat Real is an equal opportunities employer and we do not discriminate on the grounds of gender, sexual orientation, marital or civil partner status, pregnancy or maternity, gender reassignment, race, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion or belief, disability or age. Please let us know if there is anything we can do to accommodate you to participate fully in the recruitment or interview process.