About Us

We're a truly international company, fourth largest in our industry and operating across 119 markets. An inclusive, innovative global FMCG business supported by 26,000 employees. As we embrace a new era of growth, we are transforming. Our ways of working and culture are driven by a challenger mindset, constantly questioning the status quo where people can bring their best selves to work. Our agility and collaboration are driving our ambitions, innovation and success all supported by our award-winning development programmes that creates exciting and rewarding career opportunities for all.

As we move forward, our consumers will be at the heart of what we do, evolving to needs and expectations and committing to a more meaningful contribution to harm reduction by building a successful NGP business. Integral to our long-term success is our sustainability strategy, behaving responsibly and supporting our ambitions, all underpinned by high governance.

Encouraging inclusion at local levels and supporting a developing and robust diversity agenda globally, we’re fully committed to creating and maintaining an environment that celebrates and respects difference.

The Role

A new role working in the R&D pillar of Imperial’s Innovation function. Reporting to the Technology Development Manager, this role will have a global remit and will be part of the team specifically responsible for evaluating, exploring and testing technologies, to assess if they fit within the Innovation pipeline and could be a benefit to the product portfolio from either a consumer, strategic or IP perspective.  This includes developing ideas that span multiple categories/brands and development of new ideas which expand beyond the existing product and brand portfolio.

Additional Information

The Imperial Brands business is going through a major transformation, with a new CEO setting an ambitious and exciting vision for the future.  One major change is the creation of a new Chief Consumer Office (CCO) – a central function which covers Innovation, Insight, Marketing and Portfolio Management and Imperial’s next-generation products (NGP).

The Innovation function forms a critical part of this CCO structure. The department will be organised around key innovation capabilities, with one Innovation team delivering across all categories (Combustibles, EVP, HTP and OND). The role of Innovation will be to enable Imperial to deliver consumer-centric, commercially viable innovations that are aligned with the business strategy. Innovation will achieve this through:

• Delivering R&D activities: End-to-end technical design and delivery of innovation products and packs, leveraging both in-house capabilities and external parties to facilitate the launch of category-led, consumer-centric innovations into market.
• Developing partnerships: The Innovation function will collaborate closely with Procurement to build strong relationships with partners and third parties to underpin a lean and agile delivery model that enables speed to market.
• Facilitating development of the innovation funnel: Guide Imperial to make the right business decisions about innovation projects through identifying future technical solutions and supporting cross-category generation, qualification and prioritization of solution opportunity areas based on consumer, competitor and market insights.

Stewardship of the innovation pipeline and process: The Innovation function oversees Imperial’s innovation process, from Ideation to Launch. The Process and Governance pillar of the Innovation function owns this enterprise-wide process and drives continuous improvement to ensure more efficient and effective delivery of innovation. The team will also manage the portfolio of projects through the stage gates, ensure adherence to the relevant branches of the process and run the governance forums to ensure timely, insight-led decision making and OTIF delivery.

Principal Accountabilities

• Work closely with the Innovation discovery team to review and assess emerging technologies and there relevance against the Innovation technology pipeline
• Work closely with portfolio, category and markets to assess competitor and market insights.
• Identify and articulate unmet consumer needs and new demand shifts to support development of ideas within innovation opportunity spaces
• Work closely with process team and formulation category teams to develop and produce early prototypes to test with consumers
• Participate in cross functional ideation sessions with specific targets based on category input. Including all consumable and device ideas.
• Support development of the BOSCARD for emerging category ideas
• Create documents and presentations collating market and consumer insights to shape the innovation pipeline
• Support the Head of Discovery to identify, build, and continually optimise the Discovery approach and capabilities needed to support the overall innovation strategy and projects within the pipeline
• Work closely with legal and procurement to ensure necessary agreements in place with 3rd parties e.g. NDA, JDA etc
• Continuously improve processes for developing and testing product ideas.
• Further strengthen network/ relationships with suppliers, partners and eco-system to ensure insights into their innovation/ development projects at an early stage and implement joint developments on specific issues/ opportunities.
• Support the close collaboration with procurement to build strong relationships with partners and third parties to ensure access to latest developments within Imperials partner network and underpin a lean and agile delivery model
• Support the wider business i.e. marketing, insights and portfolio team, to understand trends and apply them to product Innovation pipeline development
• Provide an Interface with category, marketing and product portfolio teams, taking and developing a brief for flavours or flavour development across a range of platforms
• Providing technical support for consumable and formulation development opportunities
• Share knowledge and expertise with team members
• Collaborating across functions including Product Development, Procurement, Quality Assurance and Manufacturing, as well as external vendors, to deliver successful outcomes within specified timelines
• Ensuring the confidentiality of product development
• Support the preparation of BOSCARDS and project charters.
• Work closely with IP team to ensure A-forms are generated
• Generate and document development activities e.g. visit reports, technology assessment, and development protocols

KPIs:

• Sufficiency of innovation portfolio vs. business objectives
• Adherence to the relevant branches of innovation and risk processes
• Adherence to the relevant innovation pipeline project plan
• Meeting success criteria captured in project business cases

Critical Decisions:

• Input into determining whether NGP innovation prototypes are fit for purpose
• Input into Product concepts, charters and business cases

Key capabilities:

• Insights Application
• Technical requirements gathering/ business analysis
• Consumer-centric solution design
• Partnership relationship management

Key Relationships

Internal:

• Head of Formulation & Processing
• Head of Innovation Operations and Process
• Head of R&D
• Head of Discovery and Discovery Manager
• Marketing and Portfolio Management
• Manufacturing and Supply Chain
• Procurement
• Insights & Intelligence
• Group Science & Regulatory Affairs
• Corporate Legal Affairs
• Region & Cluster Leadership
• Group Strategy
• Head of Patents
• Head of Engineering
• Formulation category Managers
• Process Manager

External:

• Third party innovation delivery partners
• Flavour houses
• Innovation ideation agencies
• Equipment manufacturers
• Development partners

Education, Qualifications, Skills and Experience

Essential:

• Educated to degree level in Mechanical or Industrial Engineering 

Skills

• Project & Programme Management
• Collaboration
• Stakeholder management
• Product development
• Commercial awareness

Desirable:

Qualifications

• 5+ years’ experience in technical field

Experience

• Delivering innovation in an FMCG environment
• Building strong relationship with a range of stakeholders and suppliers
• Evaluating and translating trends in to product development opportunities
• Leveraging consumer, market and competitor insights to deliver compelling propositions

What We Offer

Competitive salary, bonus scheme, pension, and 25 days holiday (with an additional 4 days on top to cover the Christmas period, and bank holidays), flexible working policy, corporate discounts, Health Cash Plan, and other wellbeing initiatives.

NEXT STEPS:

Interested applicants are encouraged to apply, highlighting their suitability for the above role.