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What Can I Expect?

You know those jobs where "innovation" gets thrown around in every meeting, but nothing actually gets made? This isn't one of them.

This is a hands on leadership role inside a well-established consumer products business with serious heritage, strong market presence, and a product range people know and love.

They need someone who can lead design properly. Not just sketch concepts and talk about disruption over flat whites.

Someone who can take ideas, turn them into commercially viable products, improve the development process, mentor a team, and make sure what hits production is robust, manufacturable and worth buying.

You'll be joining a business that already has momentum. They're not fixing chaos. They're investing in what's next.

About the job

This role sits at the centre of innovation, engineering, product management, and commercial decision making.

You'll lead the design function and own the journey from concept through to production ready product. Day to day that will look like:

• Improving the NPD process so projects move faster and smarter
• Working closely with product managers on strong, realistic briefs
• Ensuring prototyping, testing and validation are done properly
• Managing design integrity through the full development cycle
• Reviewing tooling, manufacturability, materials and cost
• Supporting patent opportunities and freedom to operate reviews
• Making sure the business is using the right CAD / design tools
• Helping prioritise which projects deserve resource and which don't

In short: part creative leader, part engineer, part project conscience!

The Company

A long-established UK manufacturer. They've built trust over decades through products that combine practicality, reliability and innovation. They're the sort of business that people know - even if they don't always realise who made the product.

They've got heritage, but they're not stuck in it.

There's genuine appetite for new ideas, investment in product development, and a leadership team that understands good design drives growth.

Culture-wise? Expect grown up people, straightforward conversations, and a business where expertise is valued. Solid people building products that matter.

Sound like somewhere you could make a difference?

You'll Need

• Proven track record launching successful consumer products
• Strong product design / mechanical engineering background
• Experience with plastics and injection moulding
• Excellent 3D CAD skills (NX useful, not essential)
• Comfortable working with tooling and manufacturing teams
• Experience leading teams
• Able to balance creativity with commercial reality