Local R&D Manager Home Care

MAIN PURPOSE OF THE JOB

The R&D manager for Western Europe is based in Paris and responsible for the program in France and Spain with a strong link to Portugal. He/she is the business partner to the Marketing / Sales / Supply Chain / Careline / Legal organisations and part of the EU Home Care R&D leadership team. The R&D manager is responsible for a team with 4-5 technical assistants.

The Western Europe R&D manager works closely together with the central BU R&D team, located in Port Sunlight (UK) and Casale (Italy) and the wider cluster R&D network in EU. The cluster teams bring insights on local market, consumer, customer, regulatory and authority aspects as well as competitor activities.

The jobholder is the expert in local technical matters and provides high quality technical and R&D support enabling flawless implementation of innovations, renovations, value improvement and other relevant projects into the local markets, and supports implementation of local projects, promotional activities / activation as well as giving guidance and expert input in claims / risk / issue / crisis

KEY SKILLS REQUIRED:

* Business understanding and strategic awareness

* Proven leadership capabilities

* Track record of project management in complex environments

* Understanding of product design and knowledge of ingredients in the Home Care categories

* Formulation and product evaluation experience

* Competitor benchmarking and claims/evaluation skills

* Passion for consumers and good appreciation of customer and sales

* Organisational awareness

* Structured, systematic and logical in thinking and in doing

* Strong written and spoken communication skills: French and English

* Ability to gather information from different sources and translating those into customer/consumer relevant language

* Excellent networking skills

* Strategic influencing skills

PREFERRED WORK EXPERIENCE OR EDUCATIONAL TRAINING

* Preferably a significant number of years of work experience in a technical environment, ideally R&D and/or SC.

* Project management / TPL experience

* Team leadership, performance management, worked in multi- functional environment

* Product development experience

* Knowledge in (Home Care) Legislation

* Experience across Home Care categories

* Degree in technical, natural science, or related fields with good knowledge in chemistry and/or engineering.

PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES

Business Leadership:

• Ensuring full R&D support to launches and local activities/projects and related events including claims support and activation incl. demo creation.
• Leading projects, in particular cluster activities.
• Ensuring compliance with mandatory Unilever policies and relevant EU and local legislation.
• Translating local needs for the Home Care area into appropriate input for the category innovation programs.
• Competitor monitoring.
• Advocacy support.
• Technical Referent for locally managed innovation projects.
• Delivery of relevant technical specifications.
• Providing technical training to relevant audiences (eg CD, sales organisation, Brand teams).

Team Leadership:

• To provide line management/leadership to the R&D team,
• To create an energetic and business-minded atmosphere and to make local R&D a key place to be for R&D professionals,
• To drive skill development and foster expertise,
• Build best practice and improve ways of working on constant basis,
• To build a strong network within R&D Home Care EU,
• Career development in close collaboration with the EU R&D team and local SC team

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