European R&D Discovery Manager

With the business aiming to double in size over the coming years, significant investment has been made in R&D to support both branded and own branded products. You will need to be someone that is confident with your technical background, combining strong academic qualifications and experience running a cross functional research team.

Client Details

My client are well established in branded food products and are increasingly developing an own brand presence so this will be an essential part of leading a European wide range to support R&D. With opportunities both in the UK and internationally, the business have a strong training and development programme for those with the will and attitude to progress.

Description

• To establish and own the R&D Discovery (Technical Foresight) Pillar

• To coach the R&D Discovery Team to further develop all technical and business skills

• Consumer: To 1) champion the voice of the consumer, drive fundamental consumer insight within the organisation, and improve capability to generate actionable and compelling insights, and 2) understand the aspirations, attitudes and product needs of each group of consumers (consumer, customer / retailer, supplier to help in the identification of innovation opportunities.

• Upstream Research: To 1) Drive focus and momentum on upstream research activities to ensure the business unit has a clear innovation strategy to enable and ensure delivery against IP and financial targets, 2) partner strategically with external organisations (academic, independent, commercial) to enhance transfer of scientific knowledge and expertise into the organisation (potentially collaborative projects) to drive new IP; 3) Establish, define, design and implement a robust upstream research programme and associated process to deliver an innovation pipeline across all brands; 4) Manage / deliver key pre-PP / 'bubbling under' projects; 5) Step-change the company's reputation for innovation amongst consumers, customers, competitors, industry/scientific experts and future employees alike.

• Leverage resources both internally (patent portfolio & competitor mapping, GNPD) and externally (trends watching - consumer & technical (ingredients, nutritional, process, packaging - within and beyond the category) to assess and anticipate the changing consumer, and market (including competitor) landscape, and drive insight and inspiration within the business to fuel innovation.

• Creativity & inspiration: Bring new ways of working, training, coaching, ensure team gets fresh stimulus.

• Liaise with other R&D Pillar Managers (Due Diligence, Design & Development, Delivery) to get their support, input and buy-in on upstream ideas and ensure downstream needs are accounted for, and therefore total project execution with excellence.

Profile

• A scientist with a BSc, MSc or PhD, in Science

• Experience in running an upstream / strategic research team

• Experienced in consumer research and innovation pipeline creation and management

Ideally with a qualification or experience in one of the below fields:

• Food Science & Technology (knowledge of food ingredients, processing, packaging etc.)

• Nutrition (knowledge of physiology, biochemistry, microbiology, nutrients, functional ingredients e.g. pre- and probiotics)

• Engineering (design / functionality of equipment, manufacturing processes etc.)

• Pharmacology (biochemistry, microbiology, anatomy, physiology)

Preferably experience of:

• Commercial experience in an FMCG company, ideally food, in new product development & research.

• Trends analysis / IP generation

Job Offer

£60,000 + good benefits package