Product Development Manager - Fresh in London

Joining Sainsbury's as a Product Development Manager in the Fresh category offers an exciting opportunity to lead and shape the innovation pipeline, delivering high-quality products that meet customer needs and support the commercial strategy. With a focus on customer quality, innovation, and sustainability, you will collaborate with cross-functional teams, suppliers, and chefs to drive product development from concept to launch. This role provides a platform for continuous learning, professional growth, and the satisfaction of seeing your creations positively impact millions of customers.

As the Product Development Manager for the Fresh category at Sainsbury's, you will be responsible for leading the development and delivery of the Product Plan, ensuring that projects are executed in accordance with the gated development process and agreed timelines. Your role will involve developing insight-led Product Briefs, defining customer quality standards, and championing product quality throughout the product lifecycle by monitoring customer feedback and market performance to drive continuous improvement.

Collaborating with cross-functional teams, suppliers, and technical experts, you will drive product innovation through new ingredients, recipes, and manufacturing processes to deliver distinctive, high-quality products that meet customer needs and support the commercial strategy. You may also manage and develop a Graduate or Product Development Assistant, providing coaching, objective setting, and performance support to help them grow and succeed in their role.

As a seasoned Food Product Development Manager with a deep-rooted passion for creating innovative and high-quality food products, you bring a wealth of experience in leading complex product development projects from concept to launch within the retail or food manufacturing industry. With a strong foundation in food science and technology, coupled with a keen eye for customer value, cost management, and regulatory compliance, you excel in driving product innovation, quality improvement, and sustainability initiatives to meet customer needs and support commercial objectives.

Your exceptional project management, communication, and stakeholder engagement skills enable you to navigate cross-functional teams and suppliers effectively, ensuring the successful delivery of best-in-class products that resonate with customers and drive business growth.

Essential Criteria

• Extensive current and proven experience leading food product development projects from concept through to launch within retail, manufacturing or foodservice.
• Strong understanding of food quality, customer trends, innovation, ingredients, recipes, manufacturing processes, and the gated development process.
• Ability to develop insight-led product briefs and work collaboratively with suppliers, technical teams, chefs, commercial teams, and other cross-functional stakeholders.
• Demonstrable experience managing suppliers and manufacturers.
• Excellent project management skills, with the ability to manage multiple priorities, deliver to agreed timelines, and support commercial objectives.
• Strong communication and stakeholder engagement skills, with the ability to influence, coach, and support others, including graduates or product development assistants where required.

We are committed to being a truly inclusive retailer, so you’ll be welcomed whoever you are and wherever you work. Around here, there’s always the chance to try something new - whether that’s as part of an evolving team or somewhere else across the business - and we take development seriously and promise to support you. We also recognise and celebrate colleagues when they go the extra mile and, where possible, offer flexible working. When you join our team, we’ll also offer you an amazing range of benefits.

Starting off with colleague discount, you'll be able to get 10% off at Sainsbury's, Argos, TU and Habitat after 4 weeks. This increases to 15% off at Sainsbury’s every Friday and Saturday and 15% off at Argos every pay day. We've also got you covered for your future with our pensions scheme and life cover. You'll also be able to share in our success as you may be eligible for a performance-related bonus of up to 20% of salary, depending on how we perform.

Your wellbeing is important to us too. You'll receive an annual holiday allowance, and you can buy additional holiday. We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, interest free car loan of up to £10k, cycle to work scheme, health cash plans, pay advance (where you can access some of your pay before pay day) as well access to a great range of discounts from hundreds of other retailers. And if you ever need it there is also an Employee Assistance Programme, you will also be eligible for private healthcare too. Moments that matter are as important to us as they are to you which is why we give up to 26 weeks’ pay for maternity or adoption leave and up to 4 weeks’ pay for paternity leave.