Sr. Manager, Innovation– KIND

Job Description:

Sr. Brand Manager, Innovation - KIND

Accelerator, a global Division of Mars Snacking, is on the front line of unlocking growth across high-potential categories and brands to fuel what’s next for Snacking. It’s home to both emerging and enduring brands, including KIND, TRÜ FRÜ, NATURE’S BAKERY, RXBAR, EGGO, POP-TARTS and RICE KRISPIE TREATS. Combining the scale of Mars with the agility of a start-up, our Division has the ambition to accelerate the future of snacking by delivering products consumers love today, discovering category-shaping innovations for tomorrow and developing entrepreneurial teams whose impact will last for generations. 

We’re looking for passionate talent who dare to dream big, agile collaborators who talk straight and decide fast, and driven performers with a growth mindset. We’re proudly part of Mars, while also building something boldly different. If this inspires and energizes you, you’ve found the right place where you can do cool things with fun people for one of the biggest snacking companies in the world!

What You’ll Do

Reporting to the Senior Marketing Director, KIND, the Sr. Brand Manager, Innovation owns what KIND launches next. The role is accountable for the brand’s 18-month to 3-year innovation pipeline end to end: the consumer needs the brand should solve for, where it plays next, the propositions that get it there, the products that make them real, and the stage gates that decide what moves forward and what stops. Every launch starts with a real consumer problem, and this role is the brand’s deepest expert on who the KIND consumer is, what they want from snacking, and where the unmet needs are. This role leads a team of a Brand Manager and a Senior Associate Brand Manager, each owning a platform, and holds the earliest-stage bets personally until they earn an owner. The role works shoulder to shoulder with Consumer Research and R&D from the first consumer question to the final formulation, and hands the Core team launches that are ready to win.

What will be your key responsibilities?

Innovation Strategy & Portfolio Direction

• Own the KIND innovation strategy: where the brand plays next across formats, occasions and adjacencies, grounded in a deep understanding of the consumer, their snacking needs and occasions, category dynamics and the brand platform.
• Build and maintain the brand’s innovation insight foundation: who the KIND consumer is and could be, the jobs they hire snacks to do, the tensions and unmet needs in the category, and where KIND has the right to play.
• Represent KIND innovation to Better For You leadership and global markets, building platforms that can travel and bringing market and consumer learning back into the pipeline.
• Bring the Accelerator way of working into the brand: founder-style ownership, fast and cheap experiments, clear kill criteria, and the willingness to scale hard when something proves out.

Pipeline Management & Business Case Development

• Build and own the 18-month to 3-year pipeline, sequencing launches against capacity, investment and the commercial calendar so the brand always has news coming.
• Own the stage-gate and Integrated Business Planning (IBP) steps and make the portfolio calls on what enters, accelerates, parks or stops. Decide early, decide with consumer evidence, defend the decision.
• Build the business case for every launch, volume, margin, investment, incrementality and return, and partner with Finance to secure funding.
• Own the early-stage bets personally from consumer insight through concept and validation until each passes a gate and earns an owner or stops.

Product Design & Development

• Write propositions that start with the consumer: the problem, the person, the reason KIND wins, and the evidence that it will.
• Lead product design across every component: formulation, format, pack structure and graphics, nutrition, taste and texture, naming and claims, so the product delivers the proposition in the hand.
• Set the learning plan with Consumer Research for each platform, from concept screens through sensory and in-market validation, and stay close to the consumer throughout, in the research and in the field.
• Partner with R&D as co-owners of the product on cost, capacity and ingredient trade-offs, and own the standard a KIND product must meet before it launches.

Launch Readiness & Cross-Functional Leadership

• Hand each launch to the Core, Equity & GTM team at a defined point of go-to-market readiness, with proposition, product, business case and launch plan complete, and stay accountable for the first-year read.
• Lead the innovation workstream across R&D, Supply, Finance, Insights, Category, Sales and Omni as one plan with shared milestones and KPIs.
• Build and manage the external partnerships the pipeline depends on.

Talent & Capability

• Lead and develop the Brand Manager and Senior Associate Brand Manager, giving each real platform ownership and cross-functional leadership.
• Build innovation capability into the brand: faster concept testing, AI-enabled insight and ideation tools, and a repeatable path from idea to gate.
• Bring the outside in: consumer and cultural trends, category, competitor and adjacent innovation, and what the brand can learn from how others are winning.

What are we looking for?

• Undergraduate degree required, preferably in Marketing, Business Administration or a technical discipline. MBA or other graduate degree preferred.
• 8+ years of progressive experience in Marketing, Brand Management or Innovation within CPG, with at least 4 years in an innovation role on a scaled consumer brand. Challenger brand, start-up or growth business experience is a strong asset.
• Deep consumer understanding: has built innovation from a real consumer insight rather than a product idea, is fluent in qualitative and quantitative research, and can turn what consumers say and do into a sharp, ownable proposition.
• Has taken a product from insight through concept, development, business case and launch, with clear accountability for the result in market.
• Has run a multi-year pipeline and stage-gate process, including making and defending kill decisions.
• Has led product design across formulation, format, pack, nutrition and sensory in deep partnership with R&D and Consumer Research.
• Has managed external partners such as co-manufacturers, ingredient and technology suppliers or research institutions.
• Builds business cases that hold up: sizes the opportunity, models volume, margin and investment, and can defend the number with senior stakeholders.
• Has managed and developed people and led cross-functional teams without direct authority in a matrixed environment.
• Entrepreneurial by instinct, with a bias for action, comfort with ambiguity and curiosity for how data and AI-enabled tools can change the speed and quality of innovation.

The base pay range for this position at commencement of employment is between the range listed below, however, base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including but not limited to job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The total compensation package for this position will include variable pay, medical and dental benefits, participation in 401k plan, and paid time off benefits. Details of participation in these benefit plans will be provided if an applicant receives an offer of employment.