Director, Product & Package Scale Up (R&D)

The Director, Product & Package Scale-Up, R&I co-leads (with R&I category leads) the successful technical execution of innovation, renovation, productivity, and sustainability projects across Danone’s categories and manufacturing network. This leader is accountable for building and deploying strong scale-up capabilities that enable projects to launch first time right, with end-to-end technical rigor across product, packaging, processing, quality, and manufacturing readiness. This role serves as a critical bridge between R&I category teams, Packaging, Operations, Quality, Engineering, Procurement, Regulatory, and external manufacturing partners to ensure that new and renovated products are designed for manufacturability, validated with discipline, and scaled with speed, consistency, quality, and consumer-preferred performance. The Director brings solid understanding of the full technical system of product formulation, package design/validation, process capability, line conditions, equipment interfaces, specifications, and plant execution. Will lead a team of Scientists and Engineers who provide hands-on technical leadership for scale-up strategy, trial design, risk mitigation, validation, troubleshooting, and commercialization readiness across dairy, plant-based, beverages, yogurt, creamers, and other key platforms.

Lead Product, Package, and Process Scale-Up Excellence Own the end-to-end R&I scale-up execution for innovation and renovation projects, ensuring product, packaging, and process solutions are technically robust, scalable, safe, regulatory compliant, and consumer preferred. Co-lead technical commercialization with R&I category leaders and cross-functional partners for medium to high complexity/impact projects across Danone categories and manufacturing sites. Drive first-time-right execution through early technical risk assessment, design-to-scale thinking, clear success criteria, robust trial planning, and disciplined validation. Ensure projects are designed for manufacturability by integrating product attributes, packaging performance, processing conditions, equipment capability, quality requirements, and plant realities before scale-up. Bring Packaging Expertise Into End-to-End Commercialization Provide strong technical leadership in packaging development, validation, materials, specifications, manufacturability, sustainability, and line performance to ensure packaging solutions support business growth and operational excellence. Strengthen packaging scale-up practices across concept creation, design, materials science, prototyping, testing, validation, commercialization, and lifecycle optimization. Partner with Packaging, Product Development, Operations, Engineering, Procurement, Quality, and suppliers to identify packaging solutions that deliver superior consumer experience while meeting manufacturing, cost, sustainability, and supply chain requirements. Ensure package design, product performance, and processing conditions come together as an integrated system, especially for complex launches requiring new formats, new materials, new line conditions, new equipment, or new manufacturing sites. Deliver Innovation and Renovation Across the Manufacturing Network Lead R&I execution for innovation, renovation, productivity, and sustainability initiatives requiring scale-up across internal and external manufacturing facilities. Ensure manufacturing readiness through technical assessments, plant trial plans, validation protocols, start-up support, troubleshooting, and post-launch stabilization. Partner with Operations, QFS, R&I, and Engineering to deliver safe, cost-effective, scalable, and consumer-preferred products and packages. Drive consistent ways of working across sites to improve launch success, reduce rework, improve speed to market, and protect product and package quality at scale. Build Strong Scale-Up Governance, Tools, and Standards Establish practical scale-up