R&D Program Lead

Evermark is a newly formed beauty and personal care company bringing together a portfolio of iconic, everyday brands with enormous reach and untapped potential: Suave, ChapStick, Q-tips, Caress, St. Ives, TIGI Bed Head, Noxzema, Pond’s, Lever 2000. These are brands people know, trust, and use daily - and we are building their next chapter.

Backed by a growth-oriented YellowWood Partners, we operate with speed, focus, and accountability. Our goal is simple: modernize these brands, accelerate growth, and build a company that consistently outperforms expectations. That means sharpening strategy, raising the bar on execution, and making smart, decisive moves across the enterprise - from how we plan and operate to how we go to market.

This is a company in motion. We are scaling quickly, building new capabilities, and creating the operating model as we go. For the right people, that means rare access, real influence, and the opportunity to help shape not just a role, but a company.

About the Role:

Contract 6-12 months

Rate: $60 hourly

As the R&D Program Lead for North America, you will be an on the ground R&D business partner to the North America Marketing, Sales and Supply Chain teams across our portfolio of brands. You will need to lead and coordinate delivery of the renovation, innovation and savings projects, in partnership with the broader business, to bring sustained and exceptional growth to the North American business.

Reporting directly to the Senior Director R&D Program you will be key to driving the growth direction, whilst ensuring continued business improvement through a product lens – whether improved consumer experience to drive growth, reduced costs to improve margin or faster, risk based, execution to respond to new customer and consumer needs.

You will be working closely with the small, tight knit, entrepreneurial cross-functional team – and as such your opportunity to influence project direction will be both large and critical to success. You will be given the opportunity to rapidly develop new skills and knowledge that will go far beyond that of any typical R&D functional expert.

This will be your opportunity to drive the program for brands that are recognizable household names and with your contribution will return to growth and prominence.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and land projects for brands as Technical Project Leader.
• Ensure that all the mandated product development protocols and requirements are addressed. Ensure that the products meet all the consumer safety & regulatory requirements.
• Manage the project plan along with the project team. Ensure proper risk assessment & mitigation plan is in place for assigned projects.
• Develop compelling consumer and customer insights and stories through connection with consumers. Support business through direct customer interactions and presentations where required.
• Identify and bring to the organization new business opportunities through novel thinking and understanding of consumer trends and needs.
• Work closely with other R&D functions to deliver assigned projects as well as broader product development capabilities, such as Savings, Technical Capability building, Consumer/Customer test sample making, etc.
• Ensure the product will function as expected and has been demonstrated as such via relevant testing and interpretation of results, and creation of relevant specifications. Oversee preparation of product samples in various stage of product development to support this. Understand environmental footprint and impact.
• Lead input of whole product related perspective to x-functional teams – ensuring risks are identified, understood and mitigated. Ensure timings and expectations of R&D related activities are ambitious and correctly recognized within project plans.

Qualifications

• 8+ years’ experience in technical product development roles. Experience acting as Technical Project Leader or R&D Program Lead.
• Experience within more than one functional area of R&D. Formulation is desirable.
• Scientific degree in a relevant field, or alternative transferable technical qualification.
• Experience within non-woven cotton products is a plus.
• Track record of delivering products to market, through working with cross functional teams and external partners. Experience within US and Canada markets is preferable.
• Experience of stakeholder and risk management with examples of working agilely and leveraging an 80:20 mindset for program delivery.
• A creative, logical and analytical mind to generate innovative solutions to technical problems.
• Ability to apply business understanding and prioritize the impact of development choices considering factors such as on cost, quality, consumer and environment.
• You will need to be enthusiastic and self-motivated with good verbal and written communication skills. Able to communicate to people at all levels of the business, across different functions.

Personal Attributes

• Positive, energetic, and consumer-centric.
• Creative and inquisitive, with a history of seeking and implementing best practices.
• Strong business acumen and critical thinking skills.
• Collaborative, accountable, and committed to continuous improvement.
• Able to develop and implement strategy with a high bias for execution.

Why Join Us

This is a high-impact role at the intersection of science and strategy, where you will influence the future stability, competitiveness, and profitability of a growing consumer healthcare platform. As part of Evermark you’ll have the opportunity to deliver tangible business value through innovation that is both practical and scalable.