About Kerry

Kerry is the world's leading taste and nutrition company for the food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries. Every day we partner with customers to create healthier, tastier and more sustainable products that are consumed by billions of people across the world. Our vision is to be our customers' most valued partner, creating a world of sustainable nutrition. A career with Kerry offers you an opportunity to shape the future of food while providing you opportunities to explore and grow in a truly global environment.

About the role

The VP of R&D for Beverage Taste leads the NA regional RDA team responsible for the Go to Market approach for Kerrys technologies within the Beverage market. Responsible for our Taste portfolio of Beverage, Sweet Flavors, Tastesense, Coffee and our commercial focus areas for Alcohol, Non Alc/Refreshing and Emerging customers. Role is focused on commercial execution, customer engagement and application innovation. This leader is responsible for fostering a culture of high performance through an engaged team and develop talent within the team.

Key responsibilities

• Leading and facilitating an innovation insight-led process through market intelligence, trends research, benchmarking, collaboration with RD&A and cross-functional teams and translating this into a business strategy in conjunction with business leader to meet business growth aspirations.

• Architect and implement organisation design for growth and customer intimacy whilst developing, coach and mentor internal talent, identify and onboard needed capability and aligning career development goals with organisational objectives, having a strong people pipeline & succession plan for the team.

• Responsible for the Beverage Research, Development & Applications (RD&A) team, team and process development, pipeline execution, capacity & resources to develop

• Plays a key role in customer engagement both individually with key top to top relationships (for example strategic accounts or global customers) but also through the role RDA plays to drive business wins directly with the customers.

• Accountable for the technical execution of our technology portfolio by successfully delivering new business with excellence in execution through the R&D team ensuring all products are developed in line with Kerry pillars and growth strategies

• Creates and Delivers new Taste technologies with Flavorist Creation teams, Product development and Application teams to deliver the Beverage EUM value proposition and help our business succeed

• Drive collaborative partnerships with global taste teams, ensuring seamless integration of technologies into the NA region, fostering a culture of continuous learning and cross-functional knowledge-sharing.

• Subject matter expert in taste technologies understanding future focused market trends for Beverage industry

• Lead interaction with the external scientific community related to Flavors and Taste in North American Flavour ecosystem

• Managing and creating a safe and healthy work environment

• Taking a leading role in our NA CTO leadership team to further develop culture and structure as needed

• Partners with the Taste innovation teams to deliver on the innovation pipeline and delivery, ideation, and new platform development & evaluation.

• Partnership with Business Development to ensure pipeline development, resourcing, and priority development.

• Partnership with Business Development & Marketing to ensure proactive pipeline development with innovative concepts in line with the strategy.

• Support and develop the NPI process and applications commercial effectiveness in partnership within the business team.

• Partner with Taste leader & NA Leadership team on Senior customer engagement on R&D strategy, Technology, and Innovation

• Strong collaboration with other regional taste leads, regional partners, Global CTO & Foundational Technologies to drive Innovation, Talent development and global customer development.

• Partnership with Regulatory, Technical Operations, Product Management and Quality to ensure portfolio success, customer support and needed challenge resolution.

Qualifications and skills

• Bachelors degree in a business or technical field (or equivalent experience)

• Postgraduate / Masters Qualification highly desirable

Number of years

10 years + in a Senior Leadership position

Industry / Sector Specific

Extensive experience and knowledge of the food, beverage and/or health industry, essential that experience is within a flavour house.

Senior Customer relationships at NA customers, Knowledge of flavour industry capabilities & expertise

Management Level

Senior Management working in a regional leadership team in a matrixed organisation