Responsibilities

• Own and lead the Innovation Strategy, aligned to Business Strategy across priority portfolios.
• Define clear innovation platforms, guardrails, and playing fields for brands and categories.
• Provide strong innovation leadership and direction, ensuring the business moves from innovation participation to innovation performance.
• Act as the senior innovation voice across the organisation, influencing key stakeholders at all levels.
• Accountable for the health, quality, and value of the innovation pipeline across short and long term horizons.
• Lead innovation forums ensuring gate discipline, pace, and quality of decision making.
• Ensure innovation projects progress effectively from insight to launch readiness, balancing ambition, feasibility, and commercial return.
• Maintain a robust, prioritised portfolio that reflects resource, capacity, and strategic focus.
• Ensure all innovation is rooted in strong consumer insight.
• Oversee development of compelling concepts, propositions, and brand appropriate solutions.

Requirements

• Significant experience in Innovation, Marketing, or Brand roles within FMCG (ideally food / dairy / chilled categories).
• Proven track record of leading complex innovation pipelines from insight to launch.
• Experience managing and developing senior team members.
• Strong commercial acumen with experience building and evaluating business cases.
• Strategic thinker with the ability to simplify complexity.
• Strong influencer with gravitas across functions and leadership teams.
• Consumer obsessed, insight driven, and commercially grounded.
• Comfortable with ambiguity; able to set direction where it doesn’t yet exist.
• Collaborative, decisive, and outcomes focused
• Curiosity, resilience and a hunger to learn, grow and push boundaries

Benefits

• 25 days annual leave (excluding bank holidays)
• Health Care
• Matched pension scheme
• Benefits platform offering discounts and cashback on major retailers.