About the Role:
The R&D Manager will bring focus to innovation, new product development, and sustaining engineering initiatives to improve the Quality, Delivery, Cost, and competitive position of the product portfolio.
Lead, manage, and direct the quality development activities to support our existing domestic and new business opportunities in international markets.
This will include development and evaluation of new product lines in closer collaboration with operations, manufacturing, quality, and marketing on initiatives while managing daily tasks to ensure deadlines and objectives are met.
What You’ll Do:
Ensures and consolidates that the growth of the technical “know-how” within the working group is shared and constantly increasing.
Leads development projects and responsible for product compliance.
Incorporates relevant design expertise and experience in projects in line with brand/product/innovation strategy.
Encourages creativity in the design and development teams.
Actively searches for best-in-class technologies among competitors and develops an innovation roadmap.
Cooperates closely with product managers to assure customer focus and target costing; co-develops product roadmaps.
Coordinates with Groupe product development managers defining the right allocation of resources.
Supports projects at the Groupe level, participating in meetings and sharing technical information and “best-practices”.
Cooperates with design committee to ensure brand-consistency of product ranges.
Develops employees assigned to the department, ensuring the correct application of tools and policies on training, identifies career path, performs evaluations, and provides inputs to compensation systems.
Leads a cross functional team and manages all aspects of innovation, new product development process, and sustaining engineering to deliver on-time and to budget new and updated products with exceptional quality which exceed the expectation of the customer and shareholder.
Provide leadership and project management to prioritize workload and drive ownership at the design level.
Quality & Customer Focus: Continuously looking for ways to simplify and improve work processes to achieve better results, considering internal and external customer needs when setting priorities.
Manages others with a high level of integrity, confidentiality, ethics, and discretion.
Is direct and open while maintaining a professional, respectful demeaner.
Builds and sustains relationships with all stakeholders.
Staffs and manages engineering capacity and capability of a highly effective technical team that delivers the required business results on time, in coordination with Chief Operating Officer.
Our Ideal Candidate:
Education and Experience
Minimum 4 years of experience within Design and Development management in the Food Science industry
Bachelor’s degree in business, engineering, food science or related field required
Master’s degree preferred degree and or any other further qualification related to design, and development is appreciated
Learning & Adapting: Demonstrated a willingness to take on new challenges, responsibilities, and assignments.
Taking the initiative as problems or opportunities arise; being action oriented, willing to take risks.
Communications: Communicates clearly and candidly; avoiding vagueness, ambiguity, and mixed messages.
Contributing to an enthusiastic, positive work climate; energizing others.
Managing Work: Manages work to achieve results on time.
Understands and supports the organization’s vision, purpose, and strategies.
Understands our products and services.
In coordination with the cross-functional colleagues, establishes work priorities and schedules for completing assignments.
Required Skills and Abilities
Strong organizational skills with constant attention to detail
Exceptional business leadership experience
Provide leadership to all direct reports and ensure appropriate leadership and hands-on engagement with indirect reports
Strengthen the local team through coaching, training, and effective goal setting
What We Offer:
Competitive pay with annual bonus; commensurate with experience ($100k-$120k)
Benefits package is available; Health, Dental and Vision insurance, in addition to, paid vacation, sick leave, and 401(k) with car and cell phone allowance.