Senior Director, Packaging & Equipment

Function: Marketing - Innovation
Reports to: Senior Director, Innovation

Job Description

The Senior Director Packaging / Equipment is a senior strategic and operational leader responsible for driving packaging and equipment innovation across the Europe Operating Unit. This role leads the Innovation Hub agenda for packaging, manufacturing equipment, and enabling technologies-translating consumer needs, sustainability ambitions, and system productivity opportunities into scalable, deployable solutions across a complex, multi-market system.

Reporting into Senior Director Innovation, this role operates at the intersection of Innovation, R&D, Supply Chain, Engineering, and Franchise teams. It ensures that new packaging formats, materials, and equipment solutions progress efficiently from concept to in-market deployment. The role is critical to accelerating speed to market, system scalability, cost efficiency, and long-term value creation at enterprise scale.

• Lead the Europe OU Packaging & Equipment Innovation Hub strategy, aligned with OU innovation priorities, sustainability goals, and long-term system capabilities.

• Define, govern, and advance innovation roadmaps across packaging formats, materials, equipment, and manufacturing technologies.

• Translate consumer insights, regulatory and sustainability requirements, and operational needs into clear innovation opportunities, strategic choices, and technical briefs.

• Identify and prioritize step-change packaging and equipment innovations that unlock growth, productivity, and competitive system advantage across Europe.

• Provide senior leadership oversight for end-to-end execution of packaging and equipment innovation initiatives, from early ideation and prototyping through pilot, validation, and scale-up.

• Partner closely with R&D, Supply Chain, Engineering, Procurement, CCL and Franchise leadership to ensure feasibility, scalability, risk management, and speed.

• Act as a system-level orchestrator across European markets and bottlers, ensuring Innovation Hub learnings are shared, reused, and scaled efficiently.

• Ensure packaging and equipment innovation is fully embedded into brand, category, and innovation pipelines, supporting broader portfolio strategies.

• Champion the use of data, testing platforms, and emerging technologies to support concept validation, performance assessment, and opportunity sizing.

• Build and accelerate collaboration with external partners (suppliers, equipment manufacturers, startups, academia, and technology providers) to bring new capabilities into the system.

• Monitor global trends and best practices in packaging, materials science, automation, and manufacturing technologies, translating relevance for the European operating context.

• Establish and oversee KPIs for packaging and equipment innovation, including development timelines, scalability, cost impact, sustainability outcomes, and system adoption.

• Provide clear, executive-level updates and recommendations to senior leadership forums, highlighting progress, trade-offs, risks, and opportunities.

• Ensure strong alignment with global standards, governance models, and innovation processes, while enabling local agility and market responsiveness.

• Lead and develop a cross-functional Innovation Hub team, setting clear direction, fostering collaboration, and building technical and innovation excellence.

• Strengthen innovation capabilities across European markets and bottlers through playbooks, best practices, and structured knowledge sharing.

• Role-model modern, agile, and tech-enabled ways of working within the packaging and equipment innovation community.

• Bachelor's degree required in Engineering, Industrial Design, Packaging Science, Business, or related field; MBA or advanced technical degree preferred.

• 8-10+ years of progressive experience in innovation, packaging, equipment, engineering, R&D, or supply chain-related roles, ideally within CPG or beverage industries.

• Proven experience leading complex packaging and/or equipment innovation initiatives from concept through industrialization and scale across multiple markets.

• Strong understanding of manufacturing systems, packaging technologies, materials, and operational constraints within large, franchised or multi-partner systems.

• Demonstrated ability to lead senior cross-functional stakeholders and influence across technical, commercial, and franchise organizations.

• Experience working with external partners and suppliers to accelerate innovation and capability building.

• Strong program and portfolio management skills, with the ability to manage multiple strategic initiatives in parallel.

• Comfortable operating in ambiguous, fast-evolving environments, with the ability to set direction and drive disciplined execution.

• Executive-level communication skills, including the ability to translate complex technical topics into clear business implications.

• Strategic System Impact: Shape how packaging and equipment innovation enables growth, sustainability, and productivity across Europe.

• Enterprise Exposure: Partner with senior Innovation, R&D, Supply Chain, Engineering, and Franchise leaders across the system.

• Innovation at Scale: Lead complex, high-impact initiatives influencing millions of consumers and thousands of production lines.

• Capability & Career Growth: Deepen enterprise leadership capability within innovation, industrialization, and system transformation.

• Purpose-Driven Work: Help refresh the world and make a difference through more sustainable, efficient, and future-ready solutions.