Cluster Technical Manager

About the role

We are seeking an experienced and commercially aware Cluster Technical Manager to build and lead a newly established Cluster Technical function within our Design & Innovation (D&I) team. This is a rare opportunity to shape a function from the ground up – defining how it operates, how it engages with customers, and how it delivers value across nine manufacturing sites. Reporting to the Retail D&I Manager, you will lead a team of four Cluster Technical Specialists providing customer-facing technical expertise, complaint prevention, technical intelligence, and continuous improvement support.

Each Specialist is aligned to specific sites and works on a hybrid basis, so you will be leading a geographically dispersed team – connecting the cluster picture, driving consistency, and ensuring the function’s preventative purpose is protected. This is a strategic leadership role combining technical excellence, customer engagement, data-driven decision-making, and people leadership. You will shape and deploy the cluster technical strategy while ensuring a proactive approach to technical risk, customer performance, and operational consistency.

You will act as the key technical escalation point for significant, recurring, or cross-site issues, whilst maintaining clear ownership boundaries whereby site quality issues remain the responsibility of local Quality and Production teams.

• Technical Strategy & Governance Define and deploy the cluster technical strategy, aligned to D&I, Quality and Packaging Division priorities.
• Own customer technical governance, establishing structured technical reviews with key customers that complement rather than duplicate existing Innovation and Quality processes.
• Own the escalation matrix and decision-rights framework, acting as escalation point for significant, recurring or cross-site technical issues.
• Own the function’s KPI framework, monthly performance reviews and cluster-level trend reporting to D&I, Operations and Sales leadership.
• Leadership & Team Development Lead, coach and develop four Cluster Technical Specialists across a geographically dispersed cluster; own resource planning, site and customer allocation, and workload balancing.
• Protect the team’s proactive purpose – managing the balance of preventative versus reactive work so prevention is not crowded out by firefighting.
• Embed consistent structured problem-solving standards (8D, RCA) and build technical capability, succession and development plans.
• Customer & Stakeholder Management Build strong relationships with customers, Cluster Director and MDs, Site General Managers, Site Quality Managers, Innovation and Sales leadership.
• Ensure clean, documented handoffs between the Technical team and site Quality and Production, with ownership boundaries respected and issue status visible to all parties.
• Own cluster-level technical relationships with external suppliers including forme makers, print plate and tooling suppliers.
• Champion the function internally so Sales, Innovation and site teams understand how and when to engage it.
• Insight, Improvement & Consistency Aggregate cross-site and cross-customer trend analysis, converting recurring themes into structured prevention and improvement programmes.
• Ensure the team’s involvement in the internal and customer trials programme is planned and prioritised, providing technical insight and data to support it; ownership of trial execution and product conformance remains with site Production and Quality teams.
• Ensure learnings are captured and deployed across sites.
• Drive the standardisation and product simplification agenda across the cluster, reducing unnecessary complexity.
• Ensure structured technical feedback loops into Design, Innovation and Quality strategy.
• Sustainability Champion circular design principles and sustainable packaging solutions.
• Promote a right-first-time culture that reduces waste, rework and manufacturing inefficiency.

Essential Extensive experience (typically 8+ years) in corrugated or packaging manufacturing across production, quality, technical or design disciplines. Deep understanding of corrugated manufacturing processes,…