R&D Innovation & Strategy Lead - Away From Home

PepsiCo; Leicester; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job description

Overview

PepsiCo is looking for R&D Innovation & Strategy Lead - AFH in Europe Foods to join in Leicester, UK.

The primary focus of this newly created R&D leadership role is to be the single point of contact for all Europe business partners and work with them to build and execute our Away From Home (AFH) Strategy across Europe. The role will be technically accountable for a breadth of initiatives (Culinary, New Business Models, Commercial Change, Portfolio Optimisation) in partnership with Europe Foods R&D, Global AFH R&D and the Global Commercial AFH Team.

Responsibilities

• Partner with AFH Europe Sector team and Sector Brand partners to build and deliver AFH Innovation strategy over 3-5 years towards Europe 2030 ambitions.
• Act as a single point of contact with the business, allocate the work to Product/Packaging Development, Culinary or commercial change depending on ask. Ensure alignment, development and execution of AFH AOP adhering to timeline, budget allocation and resource requirements.
• Through thought leadership, build strong relationships with cross-functional partners, demonstrate org savvy and understand the big picture / interdependencies within critical R&D processes, systems and the business.
• Ability to look at long, mid and short term solutions and propose scenarios to go fast while building platformable future forward innovation that could work for a variety of customers, product applications and channels.
• Ensure R&D best practices are deployed, risks and issues are managed and mitigated and an approach of post implementation continuous improvement is embedded for all programs.
• Ensure all projects follow Stage Gate: Partner collaboratively with R&D functions to drive the R&D category agenda, ensure proper R&D wiring across key functions within R&D as well as technical partners, ie; Supply Chain, Logistics, Operations, etc.
• Inspire and rally the Europe R&D organization behind the AFH agenda
• Partner with global R&D AFH/Culinary organisations, share best practices with other Sectors
• Talent development and mentor junior talent and aspiring leaders.

Qualifications

• Graduate in Food, Science or Engineering discipline or equivalent (engineering for process roles) or equivalent in experience.
• Proven track record of 'Away From Home' environment work.
• Cross departmental & functional leadership (technical & commercial) skills with ability to provide clarity on workstream objectives & deliverable co-ordination.
• Experience in management of full project life cycle from concept to industrial production, delivering through others to deliver technical components of cross-functional projects.
• Understanding of customer and business needs as well as back of house operations, ingredients pantry, supply chain and other desirability, feasibility and viability inputs and constraints to consider when proposing culinary solutions.
• Lead generation of compelling & creative product prototypes to illustrate technical possibilities to build business and stakeholder interest / alignment and steer development direction.
• Ability to apply trends, food culture fundamentals and translate consumer needs into meaningful solutions by developing and articulating key product attributes.
• Ability to drive ingredient transformation through creative culinary techniques/cooking methodologies/new product forms
• Conduct active culinary explorations: cook book library, cuisines, ingredients, cooking methods, trends, external influences, menu analysis, market and food tours/immersions.
• Excellent interpersonal skills with ability to influence with integrity through persuasive communication to win support at senior levels within the organisation.
• Self-starter, self-motivating: able to work with agility without losing momentum and manage uncertainty and complexity in fast evolving FMCG environments.