Job Description

What You’ll Do for Us:

Our EMEA Innovation Center sits at the heart of The Coca-Cola Company’s next chapter of growth. We are committed to transforming and evolving our organization and ambitions — bringing our people closer to the consumer, continuously raising the bar, and embracing digitalization to enable sustainable growth.

We are looking for a transformational leader to build, inspire, and empower high-performing teams that fuel the innovation pipeline with bold ideas and turn them into real-world impact. This role is not about maintaining the status quo; it is about setting direction, unlocking opportunity, and driving valuable breakthrough innovation at scale.

You will lead diverse teams with deep product development expertise to deliver a strong and balanced portfolio of meaningful innovation — accelerating growth and shaping the future of the organization.

Scope & Impact:

Lead the top and bottom-line growth agenda for multiple fast growing brands in the Global adult ready-to drink (ARTD) category. This role is responsible for building and strongly drive a robust 3–5-year innovation pipeline of global and regional reach in partnership with the Global Development Innovation (GDI) Category network, Innovation and Technology Strategy, Global Equipment Platform, Global Marketing Category Lead, OU Innovation Hubs, OU Marketing Innovation Leaders, Strategy, Human Insights, Global Supply Chain, and Research-to-Experimentation (RtE).

Orchestrator of multiple Supply Chain functions subject matter experts and leaders, such as Flavor and Ingredient Research, Process Development, Consumer Research, Packaging, Regulation, Quality, Flavor Manufacturing, etc., to identify fit-for-purpose concepts, which could be deployed through viable scalable solutions into the markets by the Innovation Center peers or Innovation Hub teams, ensuring we deliver against Innovation metrics.

This role is a member of the EMEA GDI Center Leadership Team.

Focus Areas:

Key areas of focus of this role can be summarized as follows

Global Scope

• Develop product innovation strategies to deliver 3–5-year pipeline for growth plans for Global ARTD category
• Collaborate closely with Research to Experimentation and Global Supply Chain teams to design and develop scalable solutions for next generation of category products.
• Responsible for identifying and enabling the execution of the next RtE pipeline that can help step change of the growth of the categories.
• Collaborate deeply with global and regional SRA teams to get ahead of novel ingredients approval through appropriate agencies (FDA, EFSA etc.) and unlocking the use of new breakthrough ingredients in ARTD Category.
• Deliver impactful programs to deliver against Category Strategy in long range plans and beyond.
• Partner with GDI R&D Center peers to leverage project management routines to deliver global innovations with local consumer relevance.
• Ensure technical efforts on category are informed by consumer insights, business models and important technology trends to deliver advantaged solutions.
• Establish and maintain process and routines for cross functional inclusion in technical innovation strategy development, planning and project execution.
• Monitor external environment to identify and action on threats and opportunities for the category.
• Define and orchestrate the network for optimal people resourcing to deliver global pipelines.
• Lead and direct a multi-functional technical team (6-8 people) focused on the Global pipeline for the Global ARTD category.

Regional Scope (EMEA)

• Partner with HI and Global Marketing and GDI category to fill category pipeline with new initiatives aligned with consumer insights
• Align on the short and long term prioritized initiatives for the category in EMEA with
  • Global Marketing and GDI category
  • OU Marketing, Supply Chain and Consumer Research
• Prioritize and manage resources to deliver committed R&D plans through the stage gate process
• Leverage transformative thinking to devise solutions within unconventional business processes, models, and capabilities, while maintaining an end-to-end systemic perspective
• Develop products for consumer test with the best ingredients and process to enable superiority, scalability and profitability
• Co-lead scale up with Supply Chain, Concentrate Production and the bottler
• Capture and document learning for each project to ensure continuous improvement

FUNCTION RELATED ACTIVITIES/KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

Category Leadership:

• Drive Category Big Bets to deliver against innovation metrics.
• Lead the design and front-end development of global Big Bets and partner with GDI Innovation Center peers for regional solutions as appropriate, to ensure full value of initiatives is captured across the enterprise.
• Provide inspirational thought leadership and enable implementation of Category providing 3–5-year pipelines for competitive advantage.
• Leverage routines to ensure early engagement and inclusion of other Supply Chain functions.
• Ensure organizational alignment in the design and execution of Big Bets.
• Maintain value added relationships with multiple constituencies including Coca-Cola system leaders and associates; bottlers; customers; suppliers; external stakeholders at multiple levels and on a global basis.
• Partnering with the Innovation Center peers, ensuring external connection with Bottlers and suppliers to understand needs and share plans, to fully leverage their capability and support internal stakeholders in trade associations to address industry challenges.
• Active contributor to Present forward/Shape the Future Innovation Hubs together with the EMEA Innovation Center leader to deliver against Innovation Hub metrics.

People Leadership:

• Build and develop a highly engaged Category GDI network as well as leading a direct team (team size estimate 6-8 employees).
• Manage resources effectively, including leading the allocation and prioritization of activities, budget requirements, performance management and assessing development needs.
• Lead development of clear case for change, desired outcomes, accurate scope, clear roles and decision-making, and effective communication of the change supporting EMEA GDI Center leader on change managing and new ways of working.

Stakeholder Management:

• Build relationships and networks with key stakeholders across the organization.
• Facilitate the identification of timelines, dashboards, and financial scorecards for each initiative to keep Global Category Leadership current on progress and potential red flags.
• Ensure effective and efficient information flow between Global Category Leaders and the Innovation Center peers.

Technical Leadership:

• As a key member of EMEA Innovation Center Leadership Team, develop and implement long-term and annual business plans and ensure successful achievement of them.
• Play a key role as a leadership member to ensure the Technical Community provides optimal thought leadership, strong business value and deliver on our commitments to the business from our functional responsibilities.
• Partner in the ownership of key technical talent progress and their development.
• Control and deploy resources appropriately, making sure the category budget is well managed and we deliver against the objectives.

Communication Focus:

• This role communicates internally with the GDI network, Global Category Marketing, OU teams, and Global TI&SC teams. External communication with Bottlers, suppliers and trade associations.
• Communication and engagement with multiple key stakeholders to gain agreement on the short- and long-term category strategies for The Coca Cola Company.
• Proactive and clear communication and engagement with all key stakeholders connected with Category agenda.
• Advanced influence and negotiation skills to ensure clear articulation and alignment with stakeholders at senior levels internally and externally for the company category innovation agenda across the globe.

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Qualifications & Requirements:

• BS/MS in Food Science/Engineering - 15+ years

• Product Design Thinking certificate a plus

• Business and/or Finance certificate/experience a plus

Related Work Experience:

Mastery of (required):

• Leadership experience in leading large-scale global and regional R&D programs to deliver growth, continuity, or productivity. Product and Process Development Experience.

• Strategic thinking and leadership in consumer-centric R&D, leveraging technical and competitive insights to deliver consumer value, IP strategy and robust business cases.

• Portfolio management to help focus on areas of greatest opportunity

• Experience interacting with, influencing, and providing guidance to senior executives on substantive issues in a complex portfolio / matrixed business

• Deep expertise in organization design, planning, network design and manufacturing operations

• Orchestrator and integrator – ability to orchestrate and integrate across the organization lines, regardless of reporting relationships. Proven track record of leading teams and projects, particularly in situations lacking the back-up of direct line management authority

• Stakeholder management, with ability to drive strategic agreements with internal and external system partners around the world.

• Ability to manage multiple time horizons to establish robust multi-year plans.

Broad expertise in (good to have):

• Alcohol industry/area expertise

• Strong program management skills, including experience of multidisciplinary/stakeholder projects, and ability to deliver project objectives with tight deadlines

• Operating Unit Experience

• Financial modeling

• Global or International experience

• Strong insights generation and external capability

• Consumer/Human Insights

• Supply Chain experience

What We’ll Do For You:

• Experiences: The opportunity to learn and grow with a global organization and through multiple different category business development.

• Innovation & Technology The ability to work with an award-winning team that is on the cutting edge of innovation.

• Agile Work Environment: We embrace agile with management that believes in removing barriers, so you are empowered to experiment, iterate, and innovate.

Skills:

Location(s):

Belgium

City/Cities:

Brussels

Travel Required:

00% - 25%

Relocation Provided:

Yes

Job Posting End Date:

April 10, 2026

Our Purpose and Growth Culture:

We are taking deliberate action to nurture an inclusive culture that is grounded in our company purpose, to refresh the world and make a difference. We act with a growth mindset, take an expansive approach to what’s possible and believe in continuous learning to improve our business and ourselves. We focus on four key behaviors – curious, empowered, inclusive and agile – and value how we work as much as what we achieve. We believe that our culture is one of the reasons our company continues to thrive after 130+ years. Visit Our Purpose and Vision to learn more about these behaviors and how you can bring them to life in your next role at Coca-Cola.