Senior R&D Project Leader - Grooming & Beauty

You’ll be part of the Grooming & Beauty Research & Development team. This R&D team ensures the end-to-end development of products and solutions within Grooming & Beauty, which can vary between products, native apps, web solutions, voice, and more. We aim to develop and deliver innovations that make a meaningful difference to people’s lives. The sector builds on a deep understanding of people’s needs and aspirations to create innovations that help consumers achieve their lifestyle ambitions.

As PMO, we want to be recognized as the experts in project and program execution. We lead end-to-end product development projects in Grooming & Beauty from idea phase to product launch. We lead one or more projects within a product category with a project budget between 0.5 and 15 million Euro. The number of employees involved varies between 10 and 100, depending on the scope and phase of the project. We enable success by being transparent, engaged on all levels and end-to-end, and delivering on promises. We are responsible for creating clear and standardized end-to-end communication on product roadmaps and market commitment, ensuring reliable product roadmap delivery, and driving consumer and business value with speed, reliability, and end-to-end transparency.

Your role:

• Based on customer needs, you determine together with our marketing and internal technical competence departments which innovations, technologies, and standard modules will be used in the consumer product.
• Based on this decision, you start up and execute the product development phase together with internal function developers, industrial designers, mechanical and electronic product developers, quality engineers, consumer researchers, and purchasers.
• After finalizing the product development phase, you are responsible for developing and releasing the production processes and equipment in the Supply Chain or at key suppliers abroad by means of an OEM/ODM model.
• During product development, you ensure commitments towards business, markets, and supply chain are managed transparently and are end-to-end aligned.
• Together with your team, you set up a review structure that provides optimal insight into the current status of the project and you initiate corrective actions if required.
• You communicate project status, results, and activities with team members and internal and external stakeholders, always ensuring alignment of expectations.
• You have an international scope, so some travelling is part of this job (~20%).

You’re the right fit if:

• Master’s degree in a technical subject, preferably mechanical engineering, or an MBA.
• 5+ years of demonstrated ability in handling international multidisciplinary projects, preferably in Business to Consumer. Experience launching products and bringing them to market is preferred.
• Engineering experience in product development is required, whereas experience in production is an advantage.
• Organizational sensitivity and ability to communicate on all levels within the organization.
• Next to your technical background, you can look from a business perspective. You have a basic understanding of other disciplines, such as marketing, purchasing, and design.
• You are eager to learn and have an entrepreneurial mindset and can-do attitude. You are able to work end-to-end with product marketing.

How we work together

We believe that we are better together than apart. For our office-based teams, this means working in person at least 3 days per week.

Onsite roles require full-time presence in the company’s facilities.

Field roles are most effectively done outside of the company’s main facilities, generally at customers’ or suppliers’ locations.