Product Innovation Manager

Salary: $110k - $135k Summary This role leads the end-to‑end identification, development, and commercialization of new products for Seremoni Grade™ seafood, translating category whitespace and consumer insight into a prioritized innovation roadmap that supports our growth and margin targets. It’s a hands‑on, builder role: you’ll own the innovation funnel from concept through launch, balancing near‑term wins for the core business with the longer‑term platform bets that will define Seremoni’s next 3–5 years — acting as the connective tissue between R&D, operations, sales, and leadership. As one of the first dedicated innovation hires, you’ll also help establish the processes and rigor that will scale with the company. What you’ll do Own and evolve Seremoni’s product innovation portfolio: develop the innovation strategy and product roadmap to ensure that Seremoni meets the financial targets. Balance near‑term and long‑term innovation: deliver core‑business launches that hit this year’s targets while building the 3–5 year platform bets — new species, product and packaging formats, or new channels — that set up Seremoni’s next phase of growth. Apply a Jobs-to-Be-Done lens to ideation: identify the underlying need a consumer, diner, chef or customer is hiring a product to satisfy, and use that lens to separate genuinely differentiated ideas from me‑too concepts. Set the innovation guardrails: define what whitespace is genuinely worth chasing, so the pipeline stays focused on the right bets. Manage new product launches end‑to‑end: lead the NPD process from ideation through consumer insights, concept testing, formulation, plant trials, and packaging development, staying on as the owner of product intent all the way through commercialization and into market. Build a disciplined innovation process and tools covering both stage gate and portfolio management. Shape positioning for new product lines: in partnership with Marketing, define how each new launch sits alongside Seremoni Grade™ and the existing lineup, so the portfolio tells one coherent story. Serve as the central innovation hub and subject matter expert for value‑added seafood: track category trends, competitive launches, and retail/foodservice whitespace across seafood and adjacent proteins, translating raw data into recommendations leadership can act on. Build and validate the business case for every innovation project: size the opportunity, model margin and COGS, and run the testing and consumer work needed to de‑risk each launch before it scales. What you’ll own Prioritization and sequencing of the innovation pipeline, in partnership with leadership Go/no-go recommendations at each stage gate Positioning recommendations for new product lines and brand extensions, in partnership with Marketing Selection of testing partners, co‑packers, and vendors for active NPD projects Resourcing asks from R&D, Operations, and Sales for projects in flight What you’ll need 3–5 years in product development, innovation, or category management in CPG food/beverage A track record of taking products from concept to shelf, fluent in running a stage‑gated NPD process end‑to‑end Ability to translate market insight into sharp product briefs and sales narratives, and to assess risk/reward with imperfect information Experience partnering cross‑functionally with R&D, supply chain, and sales Strong quantitative fluency: market sizing, COGS optimization, margin modeling, and data analytics Excellent communication across audiences, from R&D technicians to executive leadership Resilience and resourcefulness — this is a startup, and the org chart is still being built Nice to have Experience with seafood or another animal protein category Familiarity with Jobs-to-Be-Done or similar consumer‑insight frameworks #J-18808-Ljbffr Shinkei