Packaging Engineering Manager-Pet

Business Unit Overview

Headquartered in Lakeville, Minn., Post Consumer Brands, a business unit of Post Holdings, Inc., is dedicated to providing people and their pets with delicious food choices for every taste and budget. The company's portfolio includes beloved brands such as Honey Bunches of Oats®, PEBBLES®, Grape-Nuts® and Malt-O-Meal® cereal, and Peter Pan® peanut butter, as well as Rachael Ray® Nutrish®, Kibbles 'n Bits® and 9Lives® dog and cat food. As a company committed to high standards of quality and to our values, we are driven by one idea: To make lives better by making delicious food accessible for all. For more information about our brands, visit www.postconsumerbrands.com and follow us on LinkedIn for the latest news.

Brand

Post Consumer Brands recently acquired several iconic pet food brands, venturing into a new market while remaining true to our purpose to provide delicious and accessible food that our consumers love. We're always searching the center store for the next exciting product to add to our portfolio, and right now, we're growing and need passionate, driven individuals with diverse perspectives to help us reach greater heights. That's where you come in. Join a team where your voice is not only heard but valued. Make a real impact on brands enjoyed by millions of people and their pets.

Location Description

Post Consumer Brands corporate headquarters in Lakeville, Minn. is about 20 miles south of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Lakeville has all the benefits of smaller town living with access to everything a large metropolitan area has to offer. Join more than 400 team members collaborating on the two-building campus to help put breakfast on the tables of millions of consumers in North America.

Responsibilities

Lead a packaging development team responsible for new and existing pet food and pet treat products. Prioritize and manage packaging development team activities and lead cross-functional initiatives resulting in meeting our cost, quality and innovation objectives. Will be responsible for completing job duties in a manner that supports all personnel safety, food safety, quality, and environmental practices.

JOB ACTIVITIES/DUTIES

Managerial: Duties include training, coaching and overall performance management to team to achieve high productive output, strong morale, and effective individual development.

Technical support: Work alongside packaging team as a hands-on resource to assist with development of new packaging/product, troubleshooting technical packaging problems, and help identify solutions.

Team Leadership: Managing and lead packaging team in all new product/packaging development, scale up, startups, and optimization or cost savings activities.

Ensure the packaging development team activities meet company cost capacity, quality, marketing, and product development requirements.

Manage and prioritize team activities including supervision of staff resources, packaging/product assignments; monitoring results, and taking corrective action when necessary.

Partner closely with Marketing, Ops, Purchasing, Finance and the Business Leadership Group to determine packaging development team priorities.

Ensure the packaging development team partners and works effectively with other technical functions including, but not limited to, engineering, product development, operations, procurement, and quality assurance.

Partnering with our plant resources and external packaging suppliers to realize packaging development goals and identify opportunities for savings and innovation

Provide technical expertise and serve as a resource to the company in areas including, but not limited to, package and process development, ingredient-and-package material interfaces, shelf-life testing, consumer acceptability.

Monitor developments outside the company including, but not limited to, new ideas/concepts, competitive activity, new package/ technology introductions, consumer and customer feedback.

Provide technical support to operations to continuously reduce cost of goods and improve quality.

Experience with multiple packaging materials related to pet food packaging such as film/laminate, paperboard, Steel/Aluminum metal cans, corrugated, thermoforming, and injection molding.

Qualifications

Education: BS in Packaging Engineering or equivenlant ie Chemical Engineering.

Experience: Minimum of 7 years of experience in the food industry in packaging development. Ideally 15+ years. Successful experience in bringing many different types of new unique packaging/products to market - from concept to national launch. Preferred, experience in pet food packaging. Experience managing people/packaging engineers.

Skills: Must have excellent written and verbal communication skills. Ability to understand the balance between dependence and independence as it pertains to decision making and bringing in upper management. Able to foresee technical issues with new package/product development well in advance in order to effectively determine the right solutions to keep projects on time and on budget. Ability to organize and interact, support, facilitate and lead multi-functional work teams; ability to provide work direction to assigned resources; ability to lead team to a consensus; strong negotiation skills. Ability to manage multiple projects, in a fast paced environment, meeting deadlines, and communicating status. Demonstrated problem-solving skills.

Other Requirements: Some travel is expected (< 20%), but there may be extended travel on certainkey start-up projects. Ability to lift 25 kg. Must have no known food allergies.