Senior Director, Co-Manufacturing Network Development

Kinder's • Walnut Creek, CA

10d • $235,000 - $255,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

Kinder’s is seeking a hands-on leader to source and develop the co-manufacturing partner network needed as its brands, categories, and customer demand grow. The role develops the future-state manufacturing network, including where capacity should be located, which partners to select, how to assess their fit, and how to secure commercial and capacity commitments. It leads network strategy, partner search and diligence, partner acceptance, and long-range capacity planning.

The Senior Director works across Operations, Planning, Product Development, Quality, Sourcing, Finance, Legal, and Commercial teams to translate growth plans and innovation pipelines into a resilient, cost-effective manufacturing network. The role is the strategic counterpart to the VP, Co-Man Network Operations: the Senior Director identifies and establishes partners and capacity, while Network Operations leads ongoing execution, partner performance, and day-to-day issue resolution after formal handoff. The Senior Director collaborates with the VP on network decisions and brings recommendations to the SVP, Operations.

The position is based onsite in Walnut Creek, California, with a hybrid structure requiring four office days weekly; Fridays are flexible between the office and working from home. Travel may be up to 35%, predominantly within the United States.

Requirements

• Significant progressive experience in food or beverage manufacturing, co-manufacturing, supply chain strategy, strategic sourcing, or a related field, with direct responsibility for partner selection and network expansion.
• Demonstrated experience finding, qualifying, onboarding, and negotiating with contract manufacturing partners across multiple products or production technologies.
• Strong command of manufacturing capacity, production economics, commercialization, food safety and quality requirements, and operational risk.
• Ability to build credible business cases and evaluate total cost, capital needs, capacity commitments, service, and resilience.
• Experience leading negotiations and cross-functional decisions involving Operations, Quality, Product Development, Planning, Finance, Sourcing, and Legal.
• Strong relationship-building skills.
• Comfort building processes and teams in a fast-growing environment where requirements and priorities evolve.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent relevant experience.

Nice To Haves

• Advanced degree.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain a multi-year co-manufacturing network roadmap covering products, capabilities, geographies, capacity, economics, lead times, and risk.
• Translate growth plans, demand scenarios, innovation, and acquisition activity into future manufacturing needs and network options.
• Evaluate and source partner choices, network concentration, redundancy, speed to market, capital requirements, and total delivered cost; present recommendations and business cases to leadership.
• Identify manufacturing network gaps and develop a pipeline of prospective partners and capacity solutions before constraints affect launches or ongoing service.
• Build search strategies and partner pipelines for new categories, formats, technologies, and capacity requirements.
• Lead structured partner evaluations with Quality, Food Safety, Product Development, Engineering, Sourcing, Finance, and Legal, including assessment of capabilities, financial health, operational maturity, regulatory readiness, scalability, and business continuity.
• Coordinate initial site visits, cost modeling, references, risk reviews, and comparative assessments; present partner recommendations for approval.
• Maintain records of selection criteria, tradeoffs, decisions, and outstanding risks.
• Define acceptance criteria and stage gates for technical capability, product quality, food safety, commercial readiness, capacity, systems connectivity, and launch execution.
• Lead the cross-functional onboarding plan through the selection process and confirm that responsibilities, escalation paths, data exchange, forecasts, materials, and operating expectations are documented and ready for handoff.
• Partner with Co-Man Network Operations to establish the transition point.
• Develop rolling, scenario-based capacity views by category, line, format, and partner, using demand, innovation, seasonality, and operational assumptions.
• Identify capacity bottlenecks, single points of failure, expansion opportunities, and the timing for partner searches, equipment investments, or reserved capacity.
• Work with Planning and partner leadership to validate available versus usable capacity, ramp schedules, changeover constraints, and contingency options.
• Turn approved capacity plans into partner commitments that support growth while managing utilization, flexibility, working capital, and cost.
• Create practical decision tools, partner scorecards, diligence standards, and approval processes to make network development repeatable.
• Lead network development as the function grows and coordinate cross-functional project teams to move partner decisions and launches forward.
• Bring fact-based recommendations to the SVP, Operations and other senior leaders, communicating tradeoffs early when service, cost, speed, and risk compete.

Benefits

• Paid time off.
• 401(k).
• Bonus or incentive eligibility.
• Equity grants.
• Competitive health benefits.
• Family-friendly benefits, including parental leave.
• Flexible work arrangements, including flexible Fridays and flexibility to work outside the office when needed.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior