Product Development Manager

Job description

## Fresh Food, Happy Dogs. We believe dogs deserve the healthiest, most natural and tastiest meals - with none of the nasties. That’s why we make FRESHly prepared food, cooked just like you would at home and delivered direct to our customers in perfect portions. As a B-Corp certified company, you’re joining a sustainable business that genuinely cares about our people, our products and our impact on the planet. Our goal is simple: to help dogs live healthier, happier, and longer lives, while leaving humans smiling after every interaction. We’ve come a long way since our co-founders (Kev & Dave) hand-delivered the very first Butternut Box. Today, we feed hundreds of thousands of hungry dogs across the UK and Europe - but we won’t stop until we’re feeding dogs everywhere. To get there, we need a team of brilliant people who share that ambition. ## 🐾 The job: This role sits within the Product Development team, reporting to the Product Development Director. You’ll own our Additional Products category end-to-end, spotting opportunities, shaping concepts, delivering launches, and deciding what stays, grows, or goes. You’ll also own product lines across wellness, gifting, food and non-food, combining the customer rigour of an innovator with the execution focus of an NPD lead, always raising the bar on how and what we deliver while staying true to the customer and ensuring every product has a clear reason to exist. **⏳ The nitty-gritty:** This role is UK-based in either London or our kitchen in Doncaster. It’s a **15-month maternity cover**, with genuine potential to stay with us beyond the placement if you’re successful in the role and interested in moving into another role at a relevant level within the team or wider squad. ## A bit about the team you’ll be joining: We’re a hybrid squad working across the UK, owning the product pipelines for both Butternut Box and Marro. We’re the foundation of what the business builds: great food, strong nutrition and products that genuinely improve pets’ health. We own what the physical product looks like and how it delivers real benefits for dogs and cats. We’re deliberately lean and close-knit, so everyone gets stuck in, has real ownership and plenty of opportunity to develop and progress. What brings us together is a deep belief in our products, our category and the power of fresh food to improve pets’ lives. ## A bit about the work you’ll deliver: #### Strategy & Ownership You’ll own and help shape the long-term roadmap for additional products and gifting across both brands. You will: - Shape the pipeline, prioritising what we develop now, next, and later based on customer, market, and commercial opportunity. - Identify and develop new product opportunities through market, customer, and competitor insight. - Lead reformulations and make clear decisions on products that no longer deliver against their role or potential. - Partner with third-party manufacturers and suppliers to identify, develop, and bring new opportunities to market. #### Product Development & Technical Ownership You’ll own the product itself, from concept and recipe through to specification, testing, launch, and post-launch performance. You will: - Own the development of both food and non-food products, ensuring every range remains true to its brief and has a clear reason to exist. - Develop and sign off recipes, specifications, and nutritional targets in partnership with manufacturing teams. - Lead factory and line trials, resolving technical issues and ensuring products are ready for scale-up and launch. - Define and interpret the testing required to prove product performance, including palatability, stability and shelf-life, sensory, and analytical testing, and use the evidence to drive decisions. - Own claim substantiation end to end, ensuring every claim is supported by robust evidence and removing those that cannot be substantiated. - Lead product launches, equipping customer-facing teams for go-to-market and conducting rigorous post-launch reviews to identify learnings and improvements. - Maintain product briefs, specifications, and supporting documentation to an exceptionally high standard. - Work with the Projects team to continuously improve ways of working, building a faster, stronger, and more effective product pipeline. #### Team & Stakeholder Management You will manage the additional products team to deliver agreed roadmaps on time and in full. This involves: - Bringing on your one direct report and continuously raising the bar on the quality of inputs and outputs. - Collaborating with and influencing stakeholders across Senior Leadership, Marketing, Procurement, Supply Chain, Operations, CRM, and Brand. - Working closely with our external partners to ensure clear accountability and high delivery standards. #### Commercial & Compliance A big part of this role is balancing product quality with commercial viability. You will: - Collaborate with the brand, data, commercial, and ops teams to determine selling prices, forecasts, positioning and branding, and to understand where capital investment is needed. - Support Procurement and commercial teams with cost analysis and margin delivery. - Ensure all products comply with relevant legislation, regulations, and internal standards, including claim substantiation. - Lead the charge in resolving compliance issues or product complaints with third parties as they arise. ## A bit about what we’re looking for: **Experience.** - 8+ years’ experience in **technical product development, innovation or R&D**, ideally in food, FMCG, pet or another regulated consumer category, or equivalent depth of experience. - Hands-on technical depth: a proven track record of taking physical products from concept through formulation, specification, testing, manufacturing trials and launch. - Strong experience working with third-party manufacturers and suppliers to develop formulations, troubleshoot technical issues and bring products into production. - Experience across food and non-food products is a plus, as is exposure to the pet category. - **A technical product owner.** You understand what makes a product safe, stable, technically viable and fit for purpose. You’re comfortable getting into the details, challenging decisions and making evidence-based calls. - **A product thinker.** You can translate customer and brand needs into products with a clear reason to exist, balancing proposition, quality, technical feasibility and customer value. - **Evidence-led.** You’re confident defining and interpreting sensory, palatability, stability, shelf-life, analytical and nutritional testing, and changing course when the evidence demands it. - **Technically rigorous.** You have high standards for formulations, specifications, claims, documentation and manufacturing, and won’t sign off something you don’t believe is right. - **Commercially minded.** You understand the trade-offs between cost, quality, technical performance and customer value, and make pragmatic decisions without compromising product integrity. - **A driver of excellence.** You’re ambitious, results-driven and always looking for ways to improve products and processes. - **A natural plate-spinner.** You’re organised and energetic, able to manage multiple workstreams, partners and deadlines without losing attention to detail. - **A collaborative influencer.** You can translate technical complexity into clear decisions and influence effectively across teams and seniority levels. - **A people developer.** You enjoy helping others grow, with experience managing or mentoring at least one person. - **An agile decision-maker.** You’re comfortable making sound decisions with imperfect information and quickly closing knowledge gaps. - **True conviction.** You care deeply about the category and believe in what we’re building and the difference it can make to pets and their owners. ## ⏳ The interview process: 1. Initial call with your dedicated Talent Acquisition Partner, carried out remotely. 2. Skills interview, for 90 minutes, in person. This stage will include an in interview task. 3. Behaviours interview, for 60 minutes carried out remotely.. 4. Leadership interview, for 45 minutes in person. *We usually expect our interview process to take 3-5 weeks, end to end.* ## 🙌 Our benefits: - 25 days holiday (plus 8 bank holidays) and an additional day for every year of service up to 5 years - 5 additional, paid 'paws' days off per year dedicated to your learning, development or personal wellbeing. Hit pause when you need it most - £500 personal learning & development budget to sharpen your skills - A significant discount on our Fresh food, to keep your own dogs as healthy as our customers - Enhanced parental leave - Flexible core working hours - Cycle to work scheme - Pension with NEST - Private Medical Insurance with Vitality - Private Dental Insurance with Bupa - Paid time off for fertility treatments and pregnancy loss - Discounted gym access through MyGymDiscounts - Lots of office dogs (Ajax, Peggy, Chief, Louis, Hansen, Winnie and many more….) ## 💡 Important things to note: - We recommend getting your application in as soon as possible. We reserve the right to close the role early. - Our team thrives on collaboration. We spend **3 days a week in our West London office** (Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday) and 2 days working from wherever you’re most productive. Because being together is a big part of our culture, we’re looking for someone within a comfortable commutable distance to London. - We’re a small (but mighty!) recruitment team. We aim to respond to everyone personally, but if we’re flooded with brilliant applications, we may need to close the role early. We appreciate your patience while we review applications. - For this specific role, we’re unable to offer visa sponsorship, so you’ll need the right to work in the UK. ## ❗️We believe in a**seat at the table for everyone.** Butternut Box is an equal opportunity employer. We believe that to make the best food for *all* dogs, we need a team that represents *all* humans. We celebrate different nationalities, backgrounds, experiences and perspectives. We are specifically committed to increasing representation from underrepresented groups. We want a strong, diverse team built from different identities and lived experiences. We’re not perfect, but we are dedicated to the ongoing work of building an inclusive, supportive place where you can do the best work of your career.