R&D Digital Strategy Lead

The Research and Development Digital Strategy Lead owns the core strategy workstream for the engagement. This role translates Research and Development priorities, big rocks, challenges and opportunities into a coherent digital strategy, prioritised portfolio and pragmatic roadmap.

The ideal candidate understands how digital capabilities create measurable business value in Research and Development, product innovation, claims, trials, quality and formula-to-factory execution.

• Lead Research and Development stakeholder discovery across the current roadmap, big rocks, pain points and strategic ambitions.
• Define how Research and Development Digital supports enterprise and Petcare Objectives, Goals, Strategies and Measures priorities.
• Apply Strategic Choice Cascade and Desirability, Viability and Feasibility methods to assess and prioritise big rocks.
• Translate findings into clear choices: start, sequence, pilot, accelerate, defer or stop.
• Build roadmap logic across quick wins, foundational enablers, pilots and longer-term transformation bets.
• Support development of value thesis, dependency mapping and decision-ready recommendations.

• 8+ years in digital strategy, product strategy, innovation strategy or transformation consulting.
• Experience working with Research and Development, product development, manufacturing, supply chain or regulated environments.
• Strong capability in prioritisation frameworks, roadmap development and executive communication.
• Familiarity with artificial intelligence-enabled innovation, digital twins, data products and enterprise transformation.

• Research and Development Digital strategy clearly linked to business value.
• Prioritised big-rock portfolio with decision rationale.
• Pragmatic roadmap aligned to value, feasibility, data readiness and dependencies.