Senior Director, JSK Stills, GDI

Location(s):

Japan

City/Cities:

Tokyo

Travel Required:

00% - 25%

Relocation Provided:

No

Job Posting End Date:

March 27, 2026

Shift:

Job Description Summary:

Location: Tokyo, Japan  

Role Type: People Leader/ Manager

Immediate Manager: Senior Director, JSK Innovation Center

Please note: The selected candidate will need to be based in Tokyo, Japan. This is a People Leader/ Manager position.

Our Japan & South Korea (JSK) 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 expertise to deliver a strong and balanced portfolio of meaningful innovation — accelerating growth and shaping the future of the organization.

The Senior Product Development Director sets the direction for the still categories and delivers growth through a future back innovation agenda. This role defines the multi-year strategy, shapes capability across teams, and orchestrates a connected global network to bring consumer loved, technically superior products to market at speed and scale. Acting as the control tower for resource management, the Sr Director ensures we deploy talent, budgets, and external partnerships efficiently across priorities, maximizing impact and ROI.

Scope & Impact:

• Define and steer the multi‑year still categories product strategy and innovation roadmap that drives top‑line growth, business continuity, and productivity.

• Lead an integrated pipeline with Global Category team & OU Marketing, Strategy, Human Insights, Supply Chain, and Research‑to‑Experimentation (RtE).

• Ensure the portfolio remains competitively advantaged through rigorous benchmarking, consumer‑back design, and science‑based validation across markets.

Key Focus Areas:

• Innovation pipeline development and delivery: Develop and deliver robust, consumer centric innovation pipeline to drive top line and bottom-line growth from technology and innovation solutions

• Team and organization development: Builds high-performing teams, develops future leaders, and drives engagement.

• Future‑Back Innovation: Envision future consumer, technology, regulatory, and system needs; translate them into today’s bets, platforms, and capability build.

• Control Tower for Resources: Establish an agile, system‑wide resourcing model that enables fluid movement of people, budgets, lab/pilot assets, and external partners across categories and geographies. Ensure resources are dynamically allocated based on shifting business priorities rather than fixed category ownership - reducing bottlenecks, increasing responsiveness, and maximizing the value delivered by the full GDI network.

• Science‑Led, Consumer‑Obsessed: Ground decisions in human insights, clinical/scientific validation where applicable, and differentiated product performance.

• Compliant, Sustainable, Scalable: Anticipate regulations, enable ingredient approvals, and ensure quality, safety, and environmental stewardship in all programs.

• Ways of Working: Embed clear routines, governance, and digital tools that increase speed, transparency, and decision quality.

What You’ll Do for Us:

Strategic Leadership & Future‑Back Agenda

• Define the still categories’ long‑range product vision and multi‑year roadmap, balancing “Big Bets,” platform builds, continuity, and productivity.

• Shape future‑back opportunity spaces (ingredients, processes, formats, science platforms) and convert them into near‑term pipelines and capability investments.

Portfolio & Pipeline Ownership

• Own the end‑to‑end product pipeline: opportunity framing, hypothesis to proof, scale‑up, and market introduction.

• Set portfolio ambition, success metrics, and stage‑gate governance; ensure sufficiency against growth and productivity targets.

Control Tower: Resource & Operating Model

• Act as the enterprise control tower for product development resources, ensuring talent, technical capability, and budget are allocated based on shifting business priorities rather than fixed category assignments.

• Break down resource silos by creating transparent capacity views, establishing clear prioritization criteria, and enabling fluid movement of experts across categories, projects, and markets.

• Drive an agile resourcing model that responds quickly to emerging opportunities, urgent issues, and strategic pivots - reducing bottlenecks where some teams are overloaded while others are underutilized.

• Influence and align leaders across the GDI network to release resources when needed, overcome protectionist behaviors, and reinforce a one‑team mindset centered on system value, not organizational boundaries.

• Continuously optimize resource deployment by monitoring workloads, identifying inefficiencies, adjusting for demand spikes, and ensuring the right expertise is applied to the highest‑value initiatives.

• Institutionalize routines and governance that support dynamic resourcing (e.g., quarterly resourcing councils, heatmap reviews, rolling capacity forecasts), enabling faster decisions and stronger portfolio delivery.

Technical & Innovation Leadership

• Elevate scientific rigor: direct RtE programs, validation protocols, sensory/consumer testing, and (where needed) clinical evidence for product claims.

• Orchestrate cross‑functional SMEs (Process Dev, TCR, Packaging, SRA, QSE, SC, FM, CPS) to convert protocepts into scalable, cost‑effective, and high‑quality solutions.

External Ecosystem & Regulatory Enablement

• Build strategic partnerships with suppliers, institutes, start‑ups, and bottling partners; scan for disruptive signals and accelerate technology adoption.

• Guide proactive regulatory pathways (e.g., novel ingredients/claims) in partnership with regional/global SRA to secure timely approvals.

People Leadership & Capability Building (Leader of Leaders)

• Build and lead a high‑performing, diverse organization, setting a clear vision, high standards of excellence, and growth‑oriented behaviors that empower teams to deliver bold innovation and sustained business impact.

• Create a culture of psychological safety, where people feel valued, trusted, and encouraged to challenge assumptions, share ideas, take smart risks, and contribute fully - driving higher creativity, collaboration, and accountability.

• Develop future-ready talent by identifying high potentials, providing stretch assignments, fostering cross‑market exposure, and ensuring robust succession plans that strengthen the long‑term health of the R&D community.

• Model and instill modern leadership behaviors, including curiosity, transparency, humility, and evidence‑based decision making - raising the bar for how teams think, operate, and collaborate.

• Build system-wide capability by establishing frameworks, standards, tools, and learning pathways that uplift product development excellence across the global and regional network.

• Act as a transformational leader, guiding teams through change, simplifying complexity, aligning people around a shared mission, and accelerating adoption of new technologies, practices, and ways of working.

• Shape a cohesive, connected community across internal teams, bottlers, suppliers, and external partners - ensuring the still categories GDI ecosystem operates as “one team,” with shared priorities and fluid collaboration.

• Champion diversity, inclusion, and belonging as drivers of innovation quality and team performance; cultivate an environment where every voice matters and every contributor thrives.

Quality, Compliance & Risk

• Ensure compliance with quality, safety, regulatory, and IP requirements across the portfolio.

• Establish risk frameworks and escalation routines to protect consumer trust and business continuity.

Performance, Budget & Communications

• Own budget performance for the portfolio, track value delivery, and productivity outcomes.

• Communicate strategy, choices, progress, and impacts clearly to senior leadership, bottlers, and key external stakeholders.

What We’re Looking For:

• BS/MS/PhD in Food Science or Engineering.

• 15+ years in F&B product innovation, including multi market portfolio leadership and end to end commercialization.

• Proven record of future back strategy creation, big bet delivery, and capability building at scale.

• Demonstrated excellence in resource orchestration/control tower models, portfolio governance, and stakeholder influence across a matrixed system.

• Strong exposure to regulatory strategy (novel ingredients/claims), IP, quality systems, and productivity programs.

• Business fluency in English & Japanese.

• Ability to travel ~20%.

What We Can Do for You:

Purpose With Impact

• We take a purpose‑driven approach that empowers our people to protect the environment, strengthen the communities we serve, and deliver safe, high‑quality products every day. Your work will contribute directly to creating positive changes.

Global Collaboration & Learning

• You’ll be part of a globally connected organization where ideas, expertise, and innovation flow freely across regions. This environment enables you to learn from others, accelerate your growth, and contribute to solutions that scale worldwide.

A Community of Belonging

• We foster a culture where people feel safe, valued, and empowered to bring their best selves to work. We believe that diverse perspectives and an inclusive environment drive better outcomes—for our people and our business.

Competitive Rewards & Benefits

• We offer a comprehensive and competitive compensation and benefits package, with core benefits beginning on your first day. We are committed to supporting your wellbeing, growth, and long‑term success.

Candidate Attributes:

Critical to our growth is the development and recruitment of modern technical leaders who will demonstrate specific growth behaviours. The key candidate attributes we will be seeking are:

• Curious — Keep seeking, never settle.

Staying curious about what is outside, and two steps ahead inspires us to challenge the status quo. Having the courage to look and leap is the way we grow. Because asking “what if?” pushes us to the next level as people and as a company. 

• Empowered — Make it happen.

True empowerment is the result of taking responsibility. This means giving yourself permission to see it, say it and do it, and owning the outcomes. Because we move forward faster when we all take action. 

• Agile — Push for progress, not perfection.

There are very few overnight successes. Greatness is borne of many little victories (and failures). Share v 1.0, test it, and make it better. Then create the next version. Because the moment we think something is perfect, it will be obsolete. 

• Inclusive — Include, value, and trust each other.

We are smart alone but together we are genius. This means being inclusive, giving the benefit of the doubt and being responsible for each other. Because, for our company to thrive for the next 100+ years, smart is not enough. We need genius. 

Why Join Us?

• Impact at Scale: Shape products enjoyed by millions across diverse APAC markets.

• Global Connectivity: Access world-class technical expertise, innovation labs, and global R&D networks.

• Digital Future: Lead with next-gen tools — from AI-driven formulation insights to virtual product design.

• Creative Freedom: Drive innovation that blends science, consumer desire, and brand vision.

• Legacy: Be part of a team building the future of beverages, with agility, ambition, and excellence.

What can help you to be successful in the role?

Growth Behavior:

• Growth Mindset: Demonstrates Curiosity. Welcomes failure as a learning opportunity.

• Smart Risk: Makes bold decisions/recommendations.

• Commercially Focused: Understands the upstream and downstream implications of his/her work.

• Performance Driven & Accountable: Has high performance standards. Outperforms her/his peers.

• Fast/Agile: Removes barriers to move faster. Experiments and adapts. Thrives under pressure and fast pace.

• Empowered: Brings solutions instead of problems. Challenges the status quo. Has the courage to take an unpopular stance.

Leadership Behavior

• Act Like an Owner: Deliver results, creating value for our brands, our System, our customers and key stakeholders.

• Collaborate with the System, Customers and Key Stakeholders

• Develops Self and Others: Develop self and support others' development to achieve their full potential.

• Drive Innovation: Generate new or unique solutions and embrace new ideas that help sustain our business.

What We Can Do For You 

• Career growth and development: Leveraging our boundaryless network, we provide access to educational platforms and provide coaching, mentoring and feedback, as a part of our Leadership & Development process.

• Diverse and inclusive culture: You’ll be embraced for who you are and empowered to use your voice to help others find theirs. We want to make our culture inevitable.

• International Experience: Become part of international projects and work along multicultural teams, through our global network.

Skills:

Our Purpose and Growth Culture:

We are taking deliberate action to nurture an inclusive culture that is grounded in our company purpose, to refresh the world and make a difference. We act with a growth mindset, take an expansive approach to what’s possible and believe in continuous learning to improve our business and ourselves. We focus on four key behaviors – curious, empowered, inclusive and agile – and value how we work as much as what we achieve. We believe that our culture is one of the reasons our company continues to thrive after 130+ years. Visit Our Purpose and Vision to learn more about these behaviors and how you can bring them to life in your next role at Coca-Cola.