Senior Director I, NA Stills, GDI

The Coca-Cola Company • Atlanta, GA

23h

About The Position

Our North America Innovation Center sits at the heart of The Coca-Cola Company’s next chapter of growth. We are committed to transforming and evolving our organization and ambitions — bringing our people closer to the consumer, continuously raising the bar, and embracing digitalization to enable sustainable growth. We are looking for a transformational leader to build, inspire, and empower high-performing teams that fuel the innovation pipeline with bold ideas and turn them into real-world impact. This role is not about maintaining the status quo; it is about setting direction, unlocking opportunity, and driving valuable breakthrough innovation at scale. You will lead diverse teams with deep product development expertise to deliver a strong and balanced portfolio of meaningful innovation — accelerating growth and shaping the future of the organization. Scope and Impact As Senior Director, Stills, GDI, you will lead a portfolio of initiatives in Tea, aiming to bring new products to market for growth, renovate existing products for superiority, profitability, and regulation compliance. Focus Areas Partner with Global Marketing and GDI category to fill category pipeline with new initiatives aligned with consumer insights. Foster a culture of experimentation within the organization, manage the budget effectively, and ensure strategic initiative alignment with our overall goals and business plans. Align on the short- and long-term prioritized initiatives for the category in NA with Global Marketing and GDI category OU Marketing, TI&SC, and Technical Consumer Research (TCR) Prioritize and allocate resources to deliver committed R&D plans through the stage gate process and across markets. Leverage transformative thinking to devise solutions within unconventional business processes, models, and capabilities, while maintaining an end-to-end system perspective. Develop products for consumer test with the best ingredients and processes to enable superiority, scalability, and profitability. Manage implementation through effective team leadership with TI&SC, CPS, and the bottlers. Capture and document learning for each project to ensure continuous improvement. Support M&A due diligence and integration processes as part of the broader operating unit strategy.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in engineering, Technical, or Supply Chain field.
• 15+ years of experience in Technical, Innovation, Regulatory, and/or Supply Chain roles.
• Strong communication skills and the capacity to influence and align with senior-level stakeholders internally within Coca-Cola and externally across the system.
• Proficient in project management principles, with the ability to apply these principles to plan, manage, or execute projects ensuring completion within set timelines and budgets.
• Advanced understanding of Safety and Regulatory Affairs.
• Expertise in Tea, Juice, and/or Hydration.
• Demonstrable leadership skills, with a proven track record of leading cross-functional teams and projects, especially without direct management authority.
• Experience in leading large-scale global and regional R&D programs to deliver growth, continuity, or productivity.
• Product Development Experience.
• Deep understanding of system economics, value chains, risk management, and mitigation, coupled with an agile and iterative mindset.
• Strategic thinking and leadership in consumer-centric R&D, leveraging technical and competitive insights to deliver consumer value, IP strategy, and robust business cases.
• Stakeholder management, with ability to drive strategic agreements with internal and external system partners around the world.

Responsibilities

• Strategic Leadership: Deliver the company’s ABP and LRP by working cross-functionally to align global and local executive level stakeholders on the OU product pipelines across multiple categories.
• Articulate a future state for beverage creation including the future role of digitization.
• Influence executive level leaders to think beyond current limitations to explore new and innovative concepts and methods.
• Ensure technical efforts are informed by consumer insights, business models, and important technology trends to deliver advantaged solutions.
• Provide inspirational thought leadership and enable implementation multi-year pipelines for competitive advantage.
• Cultivate a global perspective within the team by building rapport at all levels with our global network.
• Leverage the global system to drive scale and fast adoption of new technologies.
• Advanced collaboration skills: Ability to develop and maintain value added relationships with multiple constituencies including Coca-Cola system leaders and associates; bottlers; customers; suppliers; external stakeholders at multiple levels and on a global basis.
• Lead development of clear case for change, desired outcomes, accurate scope, clear roles and decision-making, and effective communication of the change.
• People Leadership: Build, develop and motivate a high performing team of technical product developers and SMEs that are appropriately connected with internal and external stakeholders and driving our business priorities.
• Manage resources effectively, including leading the allocation and prioritization of activities, budget requirements, performance management and assessing development needs.
• Stakeholder Management: Shape and inspire technical strategy by developing an excellent rapport with colleagues and an earned status as a recognized leader.
• Understand system needs and capabilities to appropriately influence innovation decisions.
• Negotiation and enforce technical requirements as necessary with stakeholders.
• Ensure effective and efficient information flow between the OU and TI&SC Leadership Teams to ensure effective alignment on project status and priorities.
• Technical Leadership: Develop and implement long-term and annual business plans and ensure successful achievement of them.
• Play a key role as a leadership member to ensure the Technical Community provides optimal thought leadership, strong business value and deliver on our commitments to the business from our functional responsibilities.
• Partner across the system to identify and develop technical talent within the immediate and extended team.
• Champion safety programs and ensure all products comply with occupational and food safety best practices and regulatory requirements.
• Communication Focus This role communicates internally across the TI&SC and the OU teams. External communication with Bottlers, suppliers, and trade associations.
• Communication and engagement with multiple key stakeholders to gain agreement on the short- and long-term category strategies for TCCC.
• Proactive and clear communication and engagement with all key stakeholders connected with Category R&D agenda.
• This role requires advanced influencing and negotiation skills to ensure clear articulation and alignment with stakeholders at most senior levels internally and externally for the company category innovation agenda across the globe.

Benefits

• Experiences: The opportunity to learn and grow with a global organization and through multiple different category business development.
• Innovation & Technology: The ability to work with an award-winning team that is on the cutting edge of innovation.
• Agile Work Environment: We embrace agile with management that believes in removing barriers, so you are empowered to experiment, iterate, and innovate.
• A full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits, dependent on the position, is offered.

What This Job Offers

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