Director of Commercialization

Our client in the Food and Beverage industry is hiring a Director of Commercialization!
The Mandate
Own the path from “we should make this” to a product that is formula-ready, costed, compliant, packaged, operationally feasible, and ready to sell. Partner with the product visionary to create the process, pace, and cross-functional accountability needed to turn that vision into reality.
What You’ll Own
Own the innovation and commercialization roadmap across new products, formats, flavors, and line extensions.
Build and run a stage-gate process from concept through formulation, testing, packaging, costing, production readiness, and launch.
Manage external food scientists, R&D partners, regulatory experts, suppliers, packaging vendors, and product specialists.
Maintain a single source of truth for formulas, ingredients, claims, packaging, COGS, margins, MOQs, lead times, testing, approvals, and launch dates.
Translate founder direction into clear R&D briefs and keep samples, feedback, and decisions moving quickly.
Own commercialization timelines for the 2026–27 pipeline and future innovation.
Partner with Ops on manufacturability, sourcing, COGS, copacker readiness, QA, inventory, and first production runs.
Coordinate with Brand/Creative, Growth, and Sales on naming, packaging, claims, launch assets, DTC readiness, and retailer requirements.
Identify formula, ingredient, regulatory, packaging, margin, MOQ, production, and timeline risks early and drive decisions before they delay launches.
Who You Are
5-8+ years in CPG commercialization, product development, innovation, R&D project management or adjacent roles; food/beverage strongly preferred.
Has personally taken multiple physical consumer products from concept through commercial production.
Understands formulation, packaging, regulatory/claims, COGS, MOQs, suppliers and copackers well enough to ask the right questions without needing to be the food scientist.
Exceptional project operator: obsessive about dependencies, dates, decision logs and closing loops.
Comfortable in a fast, founder-led environment where the roadmap is ambitious and priorities can evolve.
Commercial mindset: cares as much about margin, manufacturability and velocity potential as the product idea itself.

Work arrangement
Yes