Innovation Process & Portfolio Manager

At Thai Union, we are passionate about delivering high-quality, sustainable, and innovative seafood products to consumers around the world. As part of our global innovation journey, we are now looking for an Innovation Process & Portfolio Manager to join our growing Innovation Hub in Wageningen and help us build the next level of innovation excellence. As Innovation Process & Portfolio Manager, you will play a critical role in supporting the delivery of our global innovation and renovation projects for Thai Union's branded businesses.

The role will report to the Innovation Realization Officer.

Your Responsibilities:

Innovation Portfolio & Process management:

• Manage and maintain our global innovation portfolio systems, ensuring real-time visibility on financials, resources, and project KPIs.
• Analyse key performance indicators to produce reports on the portfolio and projects
• Drive and continuously improve governance processes, including stage-gate frameworks and "Idea to Project" decision-making forums.
• Collaborate closely with R&D, Marketing, Supply Chain, Finance, and Global Innovation Center to align projects with strategic growth objectives.
• Support portfolio analysis, reporting, and dashboards that enable senior-level decision making.
• Contribute to building best-in-class innovation processes, tools, and governance structures.
• Lead and coordinate selected global innovation and renovation projects across multiple functions in a Global scale.
• Contribute in building the right Governance and processes among the Inno Hub across Thai Union Branded Global business.

Project management:

• Lead project coordination to ensure smooth project execution in collaboration with all project core and extended team members, ensuring project deliverables are achieved within the allocated budget, in full & on time.
• Follow the stage gate processes for the NPD processes, help bringing clarity to the Exploration (ideation and concept validation phase) "Fuzzy front end Innovation", project start, follow all the gates until the Post launch gate/closure of project.
• Facilitate decision making and create alignment with all stakeholders to ensure the delivery of successful innovations in the market.

Why Choose Us?

• Our Values: At Thai Union, we uphold a culture defined by passion, humility, and respect. Our team is driven by a responsible, collaborative, and innovative approach, ensuring that our work contributes to meaningful change in the seafood industry.
• Innovation and Excellence: Join a forward-thinking global innovation team dedicated to delivering world-class innovation processes, governance, and portfolio management. You'll be at the forefront of shaping how we bring high-quality, sustainable products to market that meet the evolving needs of our customers worldwide.
• Build from the Ground Up: Play a key role in building and improving innovation systems, tools, and governance frameworks that will have long-lasting global impact.
• Collaborative Environment: Work closely with a diverse set of global functions including R&D, Marketing, Finance, Supply Chain, and Operations, providing broad business exposure and personal development opportunities.
• Career Development and Support: We prioritize your professional growth and satisfaction. Our commitment to understanding your unique career aspirations means providing tailored opportunities and a supportive environment to help you thrive and achieve your goals.

About You:

• Experienced in project management, portfolio management, governance and/ or process optimization.
• Experience within the FMCG, food industry, or multinational environment is a strong plus.
• Hands-on experience with Innovation project & portfolio management, tools (e.g. Excel, Bizztracker, ARC, dashboards, databases).
• Experience - Background in managing Innovation projects and product portfolios, ideally in the food industry or in the FMCG industry
• Solid financial understanding related to innovation project budgeting/resources planning and tracking.
• Excellent stakeholder management and interpersonal communication skills.
• Analytical, structured, and process-driven mindset.
• Strong adaptability and ability to thrive in ambiguity and cross-functional complexity.
• Fluent in English (both written and verbal).
• Willing to work primarily onsite in Wageningen (minimum 4 days/week) and travel occasionally.
• Ability to be resilient and reactive
• Interest in Data visualization & Analytical skills (Able to analyse complex data and present insights clearly using tools like Excel, or Power BI ).
• Proven success working with all levels of management, with strategic & commercial thinking
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Excellent presentation skills
• Skilled in working with diverse teams across different functions and cultures

About Us:

Thai Union Group, a global seafood leader, the largest canned seafood producer in the world plays a dominant role both as own global brand portfolio as well as through its Private Label (OEM) producer that includes Chicken of the Sea, John West, Petit Navire, Parmentier, Mareblu, King Oscar, Rugen Rish, SELECT, Fisho and Qfresh etc. Thai Union Group is committed to realizing its "Healthy Living, Healthy Oceans" vision. With a focus on health and wellbeing across us, we take our responsibility to sustainable fishing and the marine environment seriously - in 2016 Thai Union launched SeaChange - our strategy for looking after the oceans and managing our waste, our responsibility to our people working around the globe and the communities we work with. We set ourselves and our peers some challenging targets to be more sustainable and we're making great progress.

Our values drive how we approach our work and engage with our people and customers. These values are to be passionate, humble, respectful, responsible, collaborative and innovative. We do great work, the right way, in challenging times, but we have a strong team that gets the job done. Our people are full of positivity, resilience, fortitude and humour.

We are committed to creating an inclusive work environment where everyone feels valued and recognized for who they are. This is a critical component of our success. Each of our employees adds value to the company regardless of gender, education, religion, origin, nationality, disability or age.

What we can offer you

• A competitive salary with holiday allowance
• Discretionary bonus
• Pension plan
• 27 holidays per year
• Sport membership
• Opportunities for professional development and career advancement.
• A collaborative and innovative work environment that values sustainability and teamwork.

Next Steps

If you're passionate about making a difference and thrive in a flexible, collaborative setting, we'd love to hear from you!

We will review your application and if we think you meet the criteria of the role, we will reach out.

You will have a call with one of our recruitment team and then if we move to the next stage, we will set up an interview with your potential new manager either face to face or via Teams. Final stage interviews are usually face to face.

Thai Union is committed to providing equality of opportunity. If you require any reasonable adjustments to support your application, please let us know.