Senior Innovation & Strategy Specialist

Nestle Operational Services Worldwide SA•Arlington, VA

4d•$105,132 - $157,070

About The Position

Nestlé’s Research & Development Center is a regional hub for innovation in food, beverage, and pharmaceutical science, supported by the global Nestlé R&D organization. The center works across food, beverage, infant nutrition, and health science to develop products and services. This role drives end-to-end project management for Front End Innovation initiatives at the North American Regional R&D center and works across Nestlé USA businesses and categories. It is also referred to as an Innovation Project Manager. The role leads cross-functional teams through market and consumer insights, ideation, product and packaging development, prototyping, manufacturing, and rapid experimentation with physical products. It establishes strategic alignment and project governance to support rapid, evidence-based decisions about viability. It ensures technical work follows appropriate discipline for food safety, regulatory compliance, supplier and ingredient onboarding, and the manufacture, handling, and testing of food prototypes. The role owns the integrated project perspective and clarifies priorities, trade-offs, risks, decisions, and accountability for teams and leadership, while promoting agility, curiosity, and creative solutions. Through disciplined and agile execution, it advances validation of technologies and business ideas of strategic interest to Nestlé.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Science, Engineering, or a related field.
Working knowledge of the food industry and broad understanding of consumer research methodologies, manufacturing, product development, packaging, and commercial functions.
Working knowledge of food safety, good manufacturing practices (GMPs), regulatory compliance, and quality requirements—including supplier and ingredient onboarding—for development, manufacture, handling, and testing of food prototypes.
Ability to lead and guide product development and prototyping for food and beverage products.
Project management and coaching skills in innovation, with end-to-end experience.
Strong business acumen.
Ability to turn broad questions and insights into clear actions and outputs.
Understanding of the Build-Measure-Learn startup methodology, with the ability to apply it independently and coach and train project team members in it.
Consumer-focused mindset and passion for innovation.
Strong stakeholder management skills across functional roles and organizational levels, including setting up new ways of working and challenging the status quo.
Strong presentation skills, including storyline development, design, and communication.
Strong organizational skills.

Nice To Haves

At least 7 years of consumer packaged goods experience, specifically developing and commercializing new product concepts (preferred minimum).
At least 2 years of experience leading a project team (preferred minimum).
Project Management certification.

Responsibilities

Lead planning and execution across project scope, timing, budget, resources, risks, and ownership, applying project management, design-thinking, and agile methods.
Set an ambitious but credible project pace, resolve ambiguity, and make accountabilities and handoffs explicit.
Synthesize consumer, business, technical, and market inputs into an integrated project perspective, recommendations, and trade-offs.
Keep teams aligned on project purpose, learnings, next proofs, and success measures, and communicate these to executive leadership.
Lead cross-functional teams through end-to-end innovation testing, from consumer problem definition and solution design through prototyping, manufacturing, and testing plans, generally within eight months or less.
Create and facilitate ideation sessions that generate relevant ideas connected to business priorities and consumer needs.
Partner with Innovation Insights to execute learning plans that test critical assumptions, using existing evidence where available and maintaining decision and research discipline.
Mobilize and enable R&D support across Innovation Insights, Design, Concept and Prototyping, global R&D, business partners, external agencies, and strategic networks.
Coach teams in agile innovation practices.
Prioritize deliverables across multiple projects, establish post-closure transfer plans, and contribute project learnings to shared playbooks and ways of working.
Monitor innovation trends and external capabilities.
Travel up to 10%, primarily within the United States.