Pepsi needs a Product Design Manager

Pepsi is one of the most iconic brands in the world, with its products reaching almost every corner of the planet. And designing for a company of this scale gives you an opportunity for your designs to make in a difference in the lives of customers who use them more than one billion times a day in more than 200 countries and territories around the world. PepsiCo generated more than $64 billion in net revenue in 2018, driven by a complementary food and beverage portfolio that includes Frito-Lay, Gatorade, Pepsi-Cola, Quaker, and Tropicana. Their product portfolio includes a wide range of enjoyable foods and beverages, including 22 brands that generate more than $1 billion each in estimated annual retail sales. So go grab this unique job opening and make a difference!

The brand had designer Karim Rashid create a set of aluminum bottles, which will be used for special events hosted and sponsored by the brand, each featuring a gently tapered form. Colors and patterns are used to differentiate the brand’s Pepsi, Pepsi Light, and Pepsi Max varieties.

About The Company

PepsiCo Design & Innovation is a creatively driven team that leverages the power of Design Thinking to solve brand and business problems that drive meaningful value and growth. Our team’s mission is to lead the innovation agendas in order to accelerate and transform PepsiCo’s Global brands and businesses beyond its core, unlocking the future of CPG. We innovate with intent; to solve real problems, for real people, in the real world. We innovate to incite positive change – for people, brands, business and the world around us.

As part of our Beyond the Bottle business, we’ve recently launched a new hydration platform enabling our consumers to stay hydrated with great-tasting beverages, digitally track their hydration, and help meet the growing consumer demand for smarter and more sustainable on-the-go beverage options. Built to reflect how people drink water today, the new hydration platform is a connected ecosystem that responds to the rise in consumption of low-and-no-sugar drinks as well as a heightened focus on plastic’s effect on the environment. As a part of the Beyond the Bottle strategy evolves, Design & Innovation will play a critical role in driving the hydration innovation agenda with a focus on health, sustainability, and elevating the consumer experience.

The Opportunity

The Manager, Product Design is responsible for managing and executing the hands-on design of comprehensive equipment and structural packaging projects within PepsiCo. Successful candidates will demonstrate superior ability to drive, from ideation to execution, quality design practice applied to three-dimensional products, managing the whole design and development process. Your work will be a mix of internal execution and collaboration with internal and external partners. Successful candidates possess outstanding technical knowledge, aesthetics sensibility, design skills in form-exploration, physical problem-solving and visual communication.

Responsibilities

Create Commercial Advantage:

•Developing innovative product design solutions to create business value for PepsiCo and its brands
•Applying new technologies or new design or brand principles in innovative product/process concepts, taking initiative to develop new products

Product Development:

•Generates creative design proposals (visions, scenarios/user journey, products) in order to visualize the desired output and share it with internal and external team members
•Translates insights and requirements identified into real actionable consumer-based product design proposals, leveraging an extraordinary ability to explore different design solutions and further develop them in 3D both virtual and physical prototyping
•Works comfortably with the engineering function and proactively produces solutions that take into account manufacturability and feasibility
•Responsible for driving to final design recommendations, decisions and design approval to enable execution/production phases from concept to launch

Design Project Management:

•Responsible for partnering across disciplines within PepsiCo and external suppliers to ensure design assets are developed and delivered with quality, value, and on-time
•Regularly reviews the status of projects with appropriate leadership to verify that Company and Division expectations are met
•Maintains flow of major technical and design contributions (e.g. experience design, material/product/process innovations)

Qualifications

•8+ years of deep product design and production experience (in a global and matrixed environment, and cross-industry experience)
•Undergraduate degree in Product/Industrial Design
•Solid experience in design development from concept to launch
•Expert in Adobe Creative Suite, 3D CAD modeling and rendering, form-factor exploration, great sketching ability, and modeling skills
•Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite
•Deep understanding of engineering processes and product manufacturing capabilities
•Strong communicator with excellent presentation skills to be able to influence and sell in ideas clearly and with conviction across all levels
•Excellent, creative problem solving
•Advances and utilizes knowledge of technical, design, product, and market information
•Offers of employment are contingent upon passing required prescreens, including, but not limited to, drug and alcohol screening and motor vehicle reports.