Senior Manager, Product Development - Juices

Job Description Summary:

Senior Manager, Product Development – Juice Category LATAM

At Coca-Cola, every employee is a leader. In the Juice Category across LATAM, that means shaping product strategy with a strong enterprise mindset, translating consumer and business needs into winning technical solutions, and leading cross-functional teams through complexity with clarity and courage.

We are looking for a Senior Manager, Product Development to lead the development and renovation agenda for the Juice Category in LATAM. This role goes beyond strong technical product development expertise. It requires a leader who can connect consumer understanding, category strategy, R&D depth, operational reality, and stakeholder alignment to deliver scalable, high-quality, and commercially successful juice, nectar, and juice drink solutions.

The ideal candidate brings expertise in fruit juice systems and/or beverage development, along with the leadership maturity to make difficult trade-offs, influence across the network, and move initiatives forward in a highly interconnected environment.

What You’ll Do

Lead the product development and execution for Juice Category initiatives across LATAM, from early concept shaping through commercialization.

Translate consumer understanding, business, and market insights into product solutions that are technically feasible, commercially relevant, and regionally scalable.

Drive a holistic R&D approach, integrating formulation, processing, regulatory, quality, sensory, packaging, scale-up, cost, and supply considerations from the start.

Partner across Marketing, Regulatory, Quality, Procurement, Operations, Supply Chain, Commercialization, and bottling partners to build alignment and accelerate decision-making.

Make clear recommendations on key trade-offs involving speed, quality, cost, complexity, scalability, and consumer experience.

Lead development and renovation of juice, nectar, and juice drink portfolios, including reduced-sugar, functional, and value-optimized platforms.

Understand beverage systems, food processing, ingredient functionality, sensory performance, shelf life, and manufacturing feasibility.

Guide teams through pilot trials, plant trials, and commercialization, ensuring strong technical rigor and execution discipline.

Build credibility with senior stakeholders through clear technical storytelling, data-based recommendations, and enterprise-oriented decision-making.

Strengthen category capability by coaching and developing product developers and technical talent across the Juice network.

Act as a leader who can challenge constructively, make courageous choices, and keep teams focused on what matters most for the business.

Leadership Skills Required for This Position

This role requires a leader who can operate beyond technical excellence and consistently demonstrate the following capabilities:

Strategic thinking – Connects individual projects to broader category, business, and LATAM growth priorities.

Apply Enterprise Mindset – Makes decisions based on what is best for the enterprise, not only for one function, market, or short-term project need.

Stakeholder alignment – Builds trust and alignment across technical and business functions, especially in a complex matrixed environment with multiple priorities.

Courageous decision-making – influence across network, making difficult calls, surfaces trade-offs clearly, and takes accountability when priorities conflict or ambiguity is high.

Leadership presence – Communicates with clarity, brings structure to complexity, and creates confidence with senior leaders, peers, and cross-functional partners.

What Will Make You Successful

You think beyond your immediate project and make decisions with the enterprise, category, and market mindset.

You connect consumer needs with technical development choices.

You move fluidly between strategy and execution, from portfolio priorities to formula and plant realities.

You create alignment across functions, especially when priorities conflict.

You are comfortable making decisions in ambiguity and taking accountability for difficult calls.

You bring both technical depth and leadership presence.

Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree in Food Engineering, Biochemical Engineering, Food Technology or related field required; Master’s degree or PhD preferred

8+ years of product development experience in the beverage industry, with preference in juice drink categories.

Demonstrated success leading complex, cross-functional product development projects from concept to launch.

Desired expertise in fruit ingredients, sweeteners, additives used in juice systems.

Strong knowledge of non-carbonated beverage processing, including blending, pasteurization, aseptic processing, filling, and scale-up.

Experience navigating regional complexity including different markets, plants, bottlers, and regulatory environments.

Strong understanding of sensory, quality, and consumer relevance in fruit-based beverage development.

Ability to influence across a matrix and align technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Strong communication skills, including the ability to synthesize complexity into clear recommendations for senior leadership.

Why Join Us

Shape the future of the Juice Category in LATAM through meaningful innovation and renovation.

Work on high-impact, cross-market initiatives with strong enterprise visibility.

Join a collaborative environment where science, consumer understanding, and business thinking come together.

Grow as a leader in one of Coca-Cola’s most dynamic and complex product spaces.

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Our Purpose and Growth Culture:

We are taking deliberate action to nurture an inclusive culture that is grounded in our company purpose, to refresh the world and make a difference. We act with a growth mindset, take an expansive approach to what’s possible and believe in continuous learning to improve our business and ourselves. We focus on four key behaviors – curious, empowered, inclusive and agile – and value how we work as much as what we achieve. We believe that our culture is one of the reasons our company continues to thrive after 130+ years. Visit Our Purpose and Vision to learn more about these behaviors and how you can bring them to life in your next role at Coca-Cola.