Product & Assurance Program Manager Principal Scientist, R&D – Consumer ; CX

The Product & Package Assurance Program Manager is accountable for building, scaling, and delivering executional excellence of the Kraft Heinz enterprise benchmarking program to maintain & strengthen in-market product and packaging performance. You develop and standardize program guidelines and ways of working to drive sustained performance & improvements through sound research, including root cause analysis (RCA) on experience outages. Through this work, you translate consumer experiences into clear technical specifications and product/package design updates.

You partner closely with R&D partners (Product, Process, Packaging, Analytical Sciences, Quality), Marketing, and Market Insights to ensure the program is executed with excellence and improves over time. This role is responsible for turning benchmarking into a repeatable business capability that accelerates innovation and renovation while maintaining fit-for-purpose rigor based on decision risk.

The CX Product Insights Product & Package Assurance Team maintains & strengthens in-market product and packaging performance by translating consumer experience signals into clear direction that R&D and cross-functional partners can use to improve products. Their benchmarking program provides consistent, comparable measurement of product and packaging experiences to identify performance gaps, diagnose drivers, and track improvement over time.

• Stand up and evolve the benchmarking program, including methodology training and rollout.
• Own continuous improvement of guidelines, standards, and adherence mechanisms.

• Standardize program elements including screeners, questionnaires, product presentation standards, reporting, sense making/RCA process, cuttings & product release, analytical measurements, whether to include qualitative inputs in reporting, and leverage AI.
• Create and maintain playbooks/toolkits and training to ensure consistency across teams and time.

• Manage a CX Benchmarking Scientist who leads execution & planning.
• Ensure high-quality, repeatable execution across benchmarking work streams through clear process, documentation, and corrective actions when issues occur.
• Through close partnership with CX Associate Directors & Procurement, lead process to ensure strong vendor partners for benchmarking, plus monitor performance and partnership for continuous improvement.
• Lead RCA on experience outages; drive sustained improvements and prevent recurrence.

• Translate consumer experience signals into attributes needed to win, then develop product/package design updates and technical specifications to ensure a lasting advantage.
• Develop & lead key attribute training for cross-functional teams and in-plant as appropriate

• Bachelor’s degree minimum (Consumer Behavior/Psychology, Marketing Research, Engineering, Food Science, Human Factors, Industrial Design, or related STEM field).
• Minimum of 6+ years (BS), 5+ years (MS) or 4+ years (PhD) in consumer/product research, consumer experience, or applied insights supporting product development and commercialization—CPG or food & beverage strongly preferred—with demonstrated progression as a technical authority across multiple brands/platforms and vendor ecosystems.
• Proven ability to influence product and packaging innovation/renovation decisions by translating consumer needs into clear experience requirements and decision criteria.
• Strong technical oversight: expert scoping, critical review of study quality, and ability to QA vendor work (methods, analysis, and interpretation).
• Recognized expertise across CX research methods (qualitative and quantitative), including end-to-end study design, instrument development, analysis planning, synthesis, and storytelling; ability to select methods based on decision risk and learning objectives.
• Proven experience leading complex, cross-functional programs with multiple stakeholders, and delivery milestones
• Strong project/program management skills: critical path planning, risk/issue management, dependency mapping, and rigorous follow-through.
• Bias toward standardization and process improvement; able to simplify ambiguity into clear plans and ownership.
• Strong executive-ready communication skills: concise updates, clear…