Lead, R&D – Design & Innovation, Central Packaging

Job Purpose  

​​As the Design & Innovation Leader, you will lead a team of packaging innovation experts responsible for identifying, driving and leading innovative and disruptive packaging design initiatives that will be instrumental in delivering novel, competitively advantaged solutions across the Kraft Heinz North America portfolio.  The team’s objective is to deliver packaging design strategies, translating brand strategies and consumer Jobs-To-Be-Done (JTBD) into viable design solutions to meet growth, innovation and sustainability objectives.  In this role, you will be responsible for establishing capabilities to develop, prototype, consumer test and pilot novel pkg design solutions.  This individual will lead the team to build platformable pkg innovation solutions, identifying modular, platformable designs across brands and categories to fuel sustainable BU innovation pipelines.  You will partner with the Innovation, Process and Platform packaging teams as well as cross functional stakeholders to translate consumer insights and sustainability requirements into commercially viable, manufacturable solutions.  The role includes identifying packaging design solutions, leveraging external design partners and internal consumer experience teams to translate insights into viable designs that resonate with consumers.  The ideal candidate combines deep technical packaging commercialization expertise with strong design and innovation knowledge and proven experience managing complex design projects and technical teams ​  

Essential Functions & Responsibilities  

• ​​Lead and prioritize a portfolio of packaging design strategies and initiatives to deliver against short and long term business objectives in the retail and foodservice businesses.  Gain alignment across key functions and prioritize initiatives and resources appropriately by balancing external partnerships with design thinking, leveraging DVF (Desirability, Viability, Feasibility) 

• ​Build, coordinate and manage complex partnerships across the value chain to demonstrate value and business case, address technical and design hurdles, drive speed to market and enable competitive advantage. 

• ​Represent Kraft Heinz externally on critical industry committees and forums, serving as one external voice to advance packaging design and innovation, making Kraft Heinz become recognized for packaging design and innovation leadership in the industry 

• ​Develop strategic packaging design requirements (playbook) across NA categories 

• ​Work directly, interface and influence cross-functional team (Marketing, Procurement, Operations and Supply Chain) and vendors. 

• ​Work across enterprise (mentor and/or teacher) to expand capabilities of developers in area(s) of expertise – Design and Innovation 

• ​Lead efforts to prioritize external design agencies, managing relationships with suppliers, design and innovation partners, to drive pkg disruptive, innovation solutions 

• ​Lead/direct team to lead pkg design/technology award submissions with external sponsors, working with R&D platform teams and suppliers to build submissions for leadership/comms/marketing alignment 

• ​Manage multiple/large initiatives with complex scopes and/or cross enterprise platforms concurrently  

• ​Partner with legal to build robust IP strategies, conduct exploration and help build IP portfolio to drive competitive advantage 

• ​Own project and portfolio-level budgets, resourcing strategies and capacity planning to ensure delivery within approved financial guardrails. Develop and maintain detailed project plans, schedules, budgets and resource allocations to monitor progress, assess risk, escalate tradeoffs, and drive corrective actions. 

• ​Serve as an accountable owner for governance, escalation and go/no-go decisions.  Represent packaging in steering forums and influence stakeholders. Provide technical leadership and oversight on packaging reviews to ensure design decisions align with enterprise standards, manufacturability, sustainability, and long-term platform strategy  

• ​Serve as Subject Matter Expert by leading and driving functional training and process improvements for the pkg organization.  

• ​Mentor, coach and train junior team members​ 

People Management Responsibilities 

• Team (salaried): targeting 3 direct reports  

Key Outputs & Deliverables  

• Deliver design training and process improvements for the pkg organization 

• Deliver design strategy and pipeline for North America portfolio, leading and directing team to deliver against design initiatives to address innovation, sustainability and value engineering. 

• Lead and direct a team of packaging innovation experts to successfully deliver 5 to 10 concurrent complex packaging design projects annually across flexible, rigid and thermoform materials and formats, meeting committed timelines, budgets, and technical performance targets from concept through proof of concept and handover. 

• Ensure compliance with evolving sustainability and regulatory requirements for portfolio projects, including: 

• Minimizing Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) fees 

• Designing packaging solutions that avoid material bans and regulatory risks 

• Advancing recyclable, reusable, and compliant packaging formats aligned with enterprise sustainability goals and legislative requirements 

• Deliver packaging designs to Performance-Based Specifications (PBS), ensuring solutions meet defined functional, quality, shelf-life, consumer experience, and manufacturing performance outcomes (rather than prescriptive designs). 

• Build and sustain a high-performing packaging technical team, with clear capability deployment across the portfolio, improved bench strength, and consistent application of enterprise packaging standards. Manage, coach, mentor and retain employees, including goal-setting, performance management, salary planning and hiring. 

• Build succession and upskilling plans for junior talent, maximizing apprenticeship with more senior/experienced team members 

Expected Experience & Required Skills  

• ​​BS/MS/PhD degree in Design, Engineering, Packaging Engineering preferred or related discipline. 

• ​Minimum 11 years of R&D packaging development and commercialization experience, with significant innovation and packaging design experience and project leadership experience (consumer goods, food & beverage, pharma or similar preferred). 

• ​Demonstrated experience managing end-to-end development/innovation projects, identifying and driving packaging innovation initiatives, leading strong external partnership relationships and coordinating cross-functional teams. 

• ​Demonstrated experience in people management (up to 2 to 3 highly skilled innovation/design individuals) 

• ​Strong packaging design knowledge of materials (flexibles, rigids, fiber, etc), formats, converting processes (e.g., cartoning, filling, web handling, labeling, molding), printing, bottle closure and dispensing systems and manufacturing constraints.  

• ​Proven project management/PMO skills; experience with project governance, risk management, budget management and stakeholder reporting. 

• ​Expert knowledge of packaging design and innovation, DVF (Desirability, Viability, Feasibility) experience a plus 

• ​Excellent communication, negotiation and interpersonal skills; ability to influence at all levels. 

• ​Previous experience leading complex, packaging launches. 

• ​Industrial design experience for packaging materials, shapes, formats, with proven examples of commercialized innovations across multiple packaging formats 

• ​Skilled at leading or directing consumer insights for packaging  

• ​Skilled at translating consumer insights, consumer Jobs-to-be-done, and market trends into packaging design strategies  

• ​Experience with pilot line setups and scale‑up to industrial production. 

• ​Willingness and ability to travel up to 25% of the time​ 

Work Environment & Schedule 

This position operates primarily in a hybrid work environment and is based at the Kraft Heinz R&D Innovation Center in Glenview, IL. Our hybrid model provides flexibility based on business needs, allowing employees to work virtually up to two days per week, with an expectation to work on-site at least three days per week at the Glenview Innovation Center (Glenview, IL).  
 

Physical demands include but not limited to 

• ​​Regular office work 

• ​Physical presence at labs and manufacturing sites (internal and external) to perform experimental and validation testing​