Sr. Lead Segment Integration

Alternate Locations: United States-Massachusetts-Whately

About the Role

The Sr. Lead, Segment Integration – Candles (Home & Fragrance) is a central, capability-focused role responsible for driving integration and synergy of the Candle manufacturing capability across Newell’s plants. This role harmonizes candle standards, formulation and process practices, drives cross-plant synergies (common wax and fragrance systems, wicks, containers, filling and decoration standards, suppliers), and feeds capability intelligence back into the MDC / NPC and ERA / DFM organizations. Reporting directly to the MDC Director, the role acts as the connective tissue between plants, NPC design, ERA / DFM, and formulation / filling / sourcing teams.

Responsibilities

• Drive synergy of the Candle capability across plants – common wax and fragrance systems, wicks, containers / jars, filling and decoration standards, and suppliers.
• Identify, quantify and champion synergy and cost-reduction opportunities (wax / fragrance harmonization, wick and container commonality, filling automation, scrap and yield improvement).
• Harmonize candle standards, formulations and process practices across sites.
• Share and scale best practices, lessons learned and proven solutions across the network.
• Ensure candle standards, specs and process / burn-quality requirements are consistently understood and applied across plants – without owning change control.
• Provide candle manufacturing expertise (wax and fragrance, pouring / filling, wick setting, curing, decoration) to plant teams.
• Flag process gaps, quality and safety risks and deviations to the relevant owners (plant / NPI / ERA-DFM) and support resolution.
• Support harmonization of wax / fragrance formulation and dosing, filling / pouring and decoration technology across plants.
• Promote adoption of advanced filling automation, process control and burn-quality improvements.
• Partner with wax, fragrance, wick and container suppliers on standards, feasibility and cost.
• Capture candle capability intelligence (yield, scrap, burn quality, scent throw, line performance) and feed it back into NPC design and ERA / DFM.
• Ensure new product designs leverage the network’s candle capabilities and standards (design for filling and burn performance).
• Maintain a capability-level view of candles across the network.
• Support cost analyses and VAVE by surfacing candle commonality and synergy (wax and fragrance, wicks, containers, filling).
• Partner with Cost Engineering, sourcing and the laboratory on should-cost, benchmarking and cost-reduction that scales across sites.

Key Deliverables

• Cross-plant Candle synergy and commonality pipeline
• Harmonized candle standards, formulations and process practices
• Candle capability intelligence feedback to NPC / DFM
• Best-practice and lessons-learned playbooks
• Synergy / cost-reduction results (influenced across the network)

Requirements

• Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering or Chemistry (Chemical, Materials, Manufacturing, Mechanical or related).
• Strong experience in candle, fragrance / cosmetics, filling or formulation manufacturing (or closely related high-volume filling / formulation production).
• Understanding of wax / fragrance formulation and dosing, filling processes, wick technology and burn / product quality.
• Proven ability to influence and drive alignment across teams and plants without direct authority.
• Advanced English (written and spoken).
• Willingness and ability to travel extensively across plants.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working across multiple plants, sites or regions.
• Candle / home-fragrance experience (wax, fragrance, wicks, containers, burn performance), including candle safety standards (e.g., ASTM F2417).
• Knowledge of filling automation, DFM, VAVE and tooling / equipment cost.
• Lean Six Sigma and/or project management background.
• Spanish and/or Portuguese.

Skills & Abilities

• Deep candle / formulation and filling manufacturing expertise.
• Strong influence, collaboration and stakeholder management across sites and cultures.
• Ability to see the big picture across a capability and connect the dots between plants.
• Comfortable operating without formal authority – leading through expertise and relationships.
• Self-directed and mobile; analytical, cost-aware problem solver.

Schedule

Extensive travel across plants, with periodic global travel, is a core requirement of this role.

Pay

The base pay range for this position is from $111,200 to $152,900. Salary will be based on prior experience related to the skills required for this position.