Strategic Marketing Manager; Pharma Ingredients

Croda is a purpose-led FTSE 100 organization, delivering smart science to improve lives. As we strengthen our position across pharmaceutical markets, we are seeking a Strategic Marketing Manager to shape the future growth of the Pharma Ingredients business.

Operating at the center of the organization, you will align Marketing, Research & Technology, and Commercial teams so that innovation and portfolio decisions are grounded in market insight and focused on long-term value. You will lead strategic marketing across a diverse portfolio of approximately five hundred products within a business segment, generating approximately £250 million in revenue. This is a senior global leadership role for a commercially minded leader who can bring structure to complexity, influence across a matrix, and turn customer and market insight into sharper portfolio choices, differentiated positioning, and sustainable value creation.

• Define and lead a global strategic marketing agenda aligned with business strategy and long-term growth priorities.
• Function as the voice of the customer and market, using customer insight, market intelligence, and competitive analysis to influence strategic and investment decisions.
• Translate market dynamics and unmet needs into clear choices for differentiation, growth, margin expansion, and resource allocation.
• Strengthen decision-making through data-driven marketing and emerging digital and AI-enabled approaches.

• Shape and evolve the global product portfolio across focus for this role on medium to long - term.
• Establish structured portfolio planning and performance visibility, identifying portfolio gaps, health, and future growth opportunities.
• Translate technical capabilities into clear, differentiated value propositions that resonate with customers and support revenue and margin growth.
• Ensure portfolio choices balance customer value, strategic fit, investment requirements, and commercial return.

• Take ownership of innovation-pipeline governance and prioritization, enabling disciplined investment decisions and commercially viable outcomes.
• Align Research & Technology, Sales, Product Management, and regional teams around market-led innovation priorities and execution.
• Ensure technical capability and development of resources are directed toward the strongest market opportunities.
• Improve organizational focus and consistency in how innovation priorities are selected, governed, and brought to market.

• Align the existing innovation pipeline to the updated business strategy.
• Improve visibility of portfolio performance, gaps, and investment choices.
• Build stronger organizational capability to generate, share, and apply market insights.
• Create practical frameworks, processes, and ways of working rather than relying on an established model.

Connect market dynamics, portfolio choices, innovation priorities, and investment decisions, to sustain long-term growth.

Explore unmet needs, competitive shifts, and emerging tools to improve insight and identify future opportunities.

Convert strategic marketing principles into measurable business outcomes and return on investment.

Align Marketing, Research & Technology, Commercial, and regional stakeholders around shared choices and execution.

Lead with credibility, low ego, and transparency while building trust across a global matrix.

Maintain strategic focus while operating effectively in ambiguous and evolving environments.

• Significant strategic marketing and/or portfolio management experience in a global B2B environment.
• Experience in specialty chemicals, life sciences, pharmaceutical markets, or another complex technical sector is strongly preferred.
• Proven success, shaping complex product and innovation portfolios, and translating market insight into actionable growth strategies.
• History of influencing portfolio, innovation, and investment decisions across a complex global matrix organization.
• Commercial acumen with demonstrated focus on differentiation, sustainable growth, margin expansion, and return on investment.
• Experience coaching and developing high-performing teams and influencing stakeholders who may not…