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.

Responsibilities 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,…