Sr. Manager, Innovation– KIND

Mars•Chicago, IL

10d•$153,600 - $211,200

About The Position

The Sr. Brand Manager, Innovation owns what KIND launches next and is accountable for the brand’s 18-month to 3-year innovation pipeline, from identifying consumer needs and selecting opportunities through developing propositions and products, managing stage gates, and preparing launches for the Core, Equity & GTM team. The role is the brand’s expert on KIND consumers, their snacking needs, and unmet category needs. It leads a Brand Manager and a Senior Associate Brand Manager, while personally owning early-stage opportunities until they pass a gate and earn an owner. The position reports to the Senior Marketing Director, KIND, and partners closely with Consumer Research, R&D, and cross-functional teams.

Requirements

Undergraduate degree required.
8+ years of progressive experience in Marketing, Brand Management, or Innovation within CPG, including at least 4 years in an innovation role on a scaled consumer brand.
Deep consumer understanding, including experience building innovation from consumer insight, fluency in qualitative and quantitative research, and ability to translate consumer behavior into a clear, ownable proposition.
Experience taking a product from insight through concept, development, business case, and launch, with accountability for its in-market result.
Experience running a multi-year pipeline and stage-gate process, including making and defending decisions to stop projects.
Experience leading product design across formulation, format, packaging, nutrition, and sensory in partnership with R&D and Consumer Research.
Experience managing external partners such as co-manufacturers, ingredient and technology suppliers, or research institutions.
Ability to build and defend business cases, including opportunity sizing and modeling volume, margin, and investment.
Experience managing and developing people and leading cross-functional teams without direct authority in a matrixed environment.
Entrepreneurial approach, bias for action, comfort with ambiguity, and curiosity about how data and AI-enabled tools can improve innovation speed and quality.

Nice To Haves

MBA or other graduate degree.
Experience with a challenger brand, start-up, or growth business.

Responsibilities

Own the KIND innovation strategy across formats, occasions, and adjacencies, grounded in consumer understanding, category dynamics, and the brand platform.
Build and maintain the brand’s innovation insight foundation, including consumer profiles, snacking jobs and occasions, unmet needs, and areas where KIND has the right to play.
Represent KIND innovation to Better For You leadership and global markets, develop platforms that can travel, and bring market and consumer learning back into the pipeline.
Apply an entrepreneurial approach to innovation through fast, low-cost experiments, clear kill criteria, and scaling ideas that prove successful.
Build and own the 18-month to 3-year pipeline, sequencing launches against capacity, investment, and the commercial calendar.
Own stage-gate and Integrated Business Planning steps and make portfolio decisions about what enters, accelerates, pauses, or stops, using consumer evidence to support decisions.
Develop business cases for launches, including volume, margin, investment, incrementality, and return, and partner with Finance to secure funding.
Personally own early-stage opportunities from consumer insight through concept and validation until they pass a gate and receive an owner or are stopped.
Write consumer-led propositions that define the problem, target person, reason KIND can win, and supporting evidence.
Lead product design across formulation, format, packaging structure and graphics, nutrition, taste and texture, naming, and claims.
Set learning plans with Consumer Research, from concept screens through sensory and in-market validation, and remain close to consumers in research and in the field.
Partner with R&D on product cost, capacity, and ingredient trade-offs, and define the product standards required before launch.
Hand launches to the Core, Equity & GTM team when go-to-market readiness is defined, with the proposition, product, business case, and launch plan complete; remain accountable for the first-year read.
Lead the innovation workstream across R&D, Supply, Finance, Insights, Category, Sales, and Omni with shared milestones and KPIs.
Build and manage external partnerships needed by the innovation pipeline.
Lead and develop the Brand Manager and Senior Associate Brand Manager, providing platform ownership and cross-functional leadership opportunities.
Build innovation capability through faster concept testing, AI-enabled insight and ideation tools, and a repeatable path from idea to gate.
Bring consumer and cultural trends, category and competitor activity, and adjacent innovation into the brand’s work.