Director of Packaging, R&D
About the role
At Utz Brands, we're passionate about delighting consumers with bold flavors, innovative products, and high-quality snacks that bring people together. With more than 100 years of heritage and a portfolio of beloved brands including Utz®, Zapp's®, Boulder Canyon®, and On The Border®, we're on a mission to become the fastest-growing pure-play snack food company in the United States. The Director of Packaging R&D has leadership responsibilities for the packaging department including departmental oversight, project work, direct management of junior packaging developers, and cross functional collaboration across all Utz Brands products. You will serve as the strategic packaging leader for the organization, guiding packaging development efforts from concept through commercialization while building the packaging capabilities needed to support continued business growth.
Responsibilities
- Leads and supervises packaging department operations.
- Key partner to organization for all packaging related projects and programs.
- Manages direct reports to execute against project objectives in a timely and professional manner.
- Partners with cross functional departments such as Procurement, Manufacturing and Brand to advance initiatives.
- Leads pipeline build for Innovation/Value Creation opportunities and tracks/reports against progress and programs.
- Prioritizes resources and effectively allocates team against initiatives.
- Develops and supports technical growth for packaging team.
- Creates and implements best practices to enable effective packaging development.
- Owns and leads select projects/initiatives.
- Manages new item development to include packaging, vendor sourcing, and initial pricing.
- Develops physical pack outs, pack sizing, palletization reports, and finalized packaging specs.
- Generation of product +