Global Culinary Innovation Senior Manager

Job Description

Global Culinary Innovation Senior Manager at a glance ...

We are looking for a Global Culinary Innovation Senior Manager to lead a high-performing team of chefs and make culinary expertise a visible, credible and influential growth engine across the company. This is a leadership role for an accomplished culinary professional who has moved beyond day-to-day kitchen operations and can connect restaurant craft, consumer understanding and FMCG innovation at global scale.

You will set the direction for global culinary innovation, manage and develop a team of chefs, and build the capabilities, partnerships and ways of working needed to anticipate three- to ten-year business opportunities. You will translate emerging food trends, eating occasions and technologies into tangible prototypes, menus, applications and compelling stories that regions can adopt and scale.

Key Ingredients

• Global culinary team leadership: Lead, coach and develop a diverse team of chefs; create clarity on priorities, accountabilities and standards; build an inclusive community in which culinary talent can grow and deliver its best work.

• Culinary foresight: Translate emerging food trends and evolving eating occasions into tested recipe, menu and product prototypes that make future opportunities tangible.

• Technology application and landing: Bring early technologies to life through culinary techniques, prove performance in real dishes and eating contexts, and provide practical application guidelines and regional pilots.

• Global culinary capabilities: Build proprietary methods, quality standards, playbooks, knowledge, data and digital tools once, then scale them across regions.

• Talent and community development: Shape the culinary competency framework, strengthen the Culinary Academy and orchestrate the global Chef Network to share expertise and accelerate adoption.

• Strategic initiatives: Mobilise culinary expertise for enterprise priorities, including food obsession, culinary activation, global away-from-home customers, brand culinary identity, portfolio strategy and nutrition.

Key accountabilities

• Own the global culinary innovation roadmap and portfolio, ensuring strategic coherence across mid- and long-term projects.

• Set team priorities, allocate resources and budgets, remove barriers and ensure strong delivery across multiple global programs

• Establish clear culinary quality standards and decision principles for concepts, prototypes, applications, menus and stories.

• Partner with regional culinary and R&D teams so global work reflects market needs, lands locally and avoids duplication.

• Act as a senior strategic partner to R&D, Marketing, Insights, Sales, Nutrition, Technology and external customers.

• Increase culinary impact and credibility by bringing a clear culinary point of view to senior decisions and by demonstrating measurable business value.

• Build an external ecosystem of chef associations, universities, agencies, customers and technology partners to access breakthrough expertise.

• Champion best-in-class storytelling and experiences that make complex consumer, culinary and technical opportunities easy to understand and act upon.

• Represent the culinary function with senior leadership and externally as a credible ambassador for food, innovation and the company.

What you bring

• Formal culinary education, apprenticeship or equivalent professional chef qualification.

• Significant leadership experience gained across FMCG, food manufacturing or corporate innovation environment, meaning 15+years including past restaurant/Food service experiences.

• A strong track record of managing, coaching and developing chefs or culinary professionals across locations, cultures or regions.

• Demonstrated success leading complex innovation portfolios and multidisciplinary teams from early exploration through prototype validation and regional adoption.

• Deep understanding of food, ingredients, techniques, menus, eating occasions and the realities of scaling culinary ideas into commercial products and customer solutions.

• Ability to turn trends and technologies into compelling, technically credible and scalable culinary applications.

• Strong business acumen, portfolio judgement and confidence making prioritisation, resource and scope trade-offs.

• Executive-level communication, facilitation, storytelling and influencing skills, with the credibility to challenge and inspire senior stakeholders.

• Experience building external partnerships and professional networks; international experience is strongly preferred.

• Fluent English and willingness to work across time zones and travel internationally as required.

Recipe for Success: Apply if this sounds like you!

• People developer: You create high standards and psychological safety, give clear feedback and actively grow the next generation of culinary leaders.

• Strategic chef: You combine culinary instinct with consumer, technical and commercial thinking and are as comfortable shaping a roadmap as tasting a prototype.

• Connector: You build trust across global and regional teams, clarify decision rights and turn diverse expertise into one coherent direction.

• Influencer: You raise the voice of culinary through evidence, experiences and stories that change decisions and unlock action.

• Future focused: You are curious about culture, technology and behaviour and can turn ambiguity into focused experimentation.

• Owner: You make thoughtful trade-offs, follow through on commitments and measure success through adoption, capability growth and business impact.

Why join us?

This is an opportunity to shape how culinary expertise creates competitive advantage across a global business. You will lead talented chefs, influence the future innovation pipeline and build a connected culinary community that turns food insight, craft and technology into distinctive experiences and sustainable growth.

Location(s)

Nijmegen

Kraft Heinz is an Equal Opportunity Employer – Underrepresented Ethnic Minority Groups/Women/Veterans/Individuals with Disabilities/Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity and other protected classes.