Job Summary

Reporting to the Senior Director Research & Development, the Manager R&D Performance Optimization continuously maximizes margin improvement opportunities. You will be responsible for identifying the strategic levers that can be most effective maximizing the profit potential of our active products in the market.  You will help design the reporting and initiative value to focus MVP teams on relevant initiatives with Senior Leadership and key business partners including Brand, Finance and Supply Chain. Key responsibilities for this role include developing new business classifications, coordination and reporting for margin improvement initiatives that require R&D enablement. 

You will lead future Performance Optimization initiatives by bringing together relevant internal business metrics, like material, ingredient and production costs in order to enable analytics, insights and reporting to transform our strategies.  In conjunction with the Digital R&D principle and the Growth Lead, you will enable new ways of prioritizing projects by marrying project complexity and effort with business value.

What you’ll do

• Serve as the R&D Performance Optimization (PO) lead for cross functional collaboration with Supply Chain, Brand, & Finance on growth, margin improvement or other performance enhancement opportunities

• Lead and support the development of the major PO workstreams in project prioritization and capacity planning for growth, improvement and enhancement initiatives

• Identify and document core internal business measures that are used in major decisions across brand, finance, supply chain, demand science to enable consistent metrics for decision making

• Partner closely with R&D senior leaders to identify project support requirements, methods for evaluating business value, and opportunities to provide data for project prioritization

• Establish metrics and simple reporting to prioritize project activation in R&D

• Exemplify strong collaboration skills with internal business partners to identify needs and opportunities for improved business processes

• Develop innovative approaches to improve business processes, evaluate the feasibility and soundness of planned approaches

• Develop and maintain a strong, proactive & highly collaborative relationship with internal and external business leaders to deliver with urgency fact-based decision making and actionable solutions.

• Deliver internal business strategies outlined in our annual operating plan and three-year strategic algorithm

• Maintain an external focus by staying abreast of competitive activities, changes in external conditions related to demand, supply and service, and investing in personal growth opportunities around industry education on emerging and best practices

• Be a visible leader who clearly drives transformational changes resulting from sound business strategy

Position Qualifications/What You’ll Bring

• BS or BA degree or equivalent minimum 7 years’ experience demonstrating position responsibilities. 

• Strong project/operational leadership skills

• Demonstrated experience in successfully driving business processes adoption, reimagination and the use of data for decision making

• Expert knowledge of internal business metrics, including operational measures and the calculation or process for developing those measure

• Extensive working knowledge of CPG business processes and alternative approaches to standard system approaches

• Demonstrated proficiency in influencing business strategy implementation using demonstrable data, insights and analytics

• Experience interfacing with and influencing personnel at senior levels of the organization

• Available to work during non-core business hours to support business as needed

• At this time, we require applicants for this role to be legally authorized to work in the United States without requiring employer sponsorship either now or in the future

Our Modern Workplace

Conagra’s culture of collaboration enhances our ability to meet critical business goals, deliver value to customers and consumers and provide you with the flexibility you need to achieve a better work-life balance. We carefully consider each role and how often each team member needs to collaborate in-person. This position requires you work from our Chicago/Omaha office 3 days a week.

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Our Benefits:

We care about your total well-being and will support you with the following, subject to your location and role:

• Health: Medical, dental and vision insurance, company-paid life, accident and disability insurance
• Wealth: great pay, incentive opportunity, matching 401(k) and stock purchase plan
• Growth: online courses, virtual and classroom development experiences
• Balance: paid-time off, paternal leave, flexible work-schedules (subject to your location and role)

Our Company:

Conagra Brands is one of North America's leading branded food companies. We have a rich heritage of making great food, and a team that’s passionate about innovation and growth. Conagra offers choices for every occasion through iconic brands, such as Birds Eye®, Marie Callender's®, Banquet®, Healthy Choice®, Slim Jim®, Reddi-wip®, and Vlasic®, and emerging brands, including Angie's® BOOMCHICKAPOP®, Duke's®, Earth Balance®, Gardein®, and Frontera®.

We pride ourselves on having the most impactful, energized and inclusive culture in the food industry. For more information, visit www.conagrabrands.com.

Conagra Brands is an equal opportunity employer and considers qualified applicants for employment without regard to sex, race, color, religion, ethnic or national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, pregnancy, leave status, disability, veteran status, genetic information and/or any other characteristic or status protected by national, federal, state or local law. â€‹