Great things are happening in the Europe and Australia (EUAU) region. Each day, our 2,500 plus colleagues bring their passion to our offices, manufacturing sites, R&D center, and commercial/distributor markets across Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. We are energized by over 150 years of bringing people together with the food they love. With beloved brands Old El Paso, Häagen-Dazs, Nature Valley, Betty Crocker, Fibre One, Latina Fresh and more, we are on a mission to become the undisputed growth leader in food for EUAU. In a world that’s ever-changing, we look to stay ahead and seek people who share our love of food and are hungry to shape the future.
What your role is
Position Overview
As a R&D Packaging Engineer attached to the R&D Applications Team, you will be responsible for driving packaging development projects across innovation, core range renovation, sustainability, and margin management for Old El Paso and Green Giant to enable our business to win in the marketplace.
In this role you will leverage your technical, influence, and project management skills and will partner with cross functional teams, internal and external partners to identify, develop and implement packaging solutions for new or existing products.
Accountabilities
1. Manage and lead multiple projects: create and execute technical plans, risk assessments, and mitigation plans, create prototypes, manage timelines, provide effective communication and documentation of work.
2. Actively collaborate with the factory team for the organization and the execution of industrial trials. Build a trial report and communicate the conclusions.
3. Build and keep packaging technical specifications up to date
4. Build strong relationships and work collaboratively with multiple cross functional stakeholders, across R&D, Marketing, Sourcing, Supply Chain and External Partners to deliver winning packaging solutions.
5. Communicate to business partners progress, risks and changes on active projects and influence decisions informed by deep consumer-, technical- and business understanding.
6. Pro-actively lead collaboration with cross-functional partners to develop robust packaging pipelines across innovation, renovation, sustainability and margin management, based on consumer needs and business strategy
7. Build and maintain relationships with internal and external networks (e.g. suppliers, packaging schools, start-ups, external packaging organisations) to broaden perspective, identify areas of opportunity, leverage capabilities, apply outside-in thinking and effectively influence and gain support for initiatives
8. Stay abreast of packaging technology developments, regulatory landscape changes and competitive packaging activity to grow awareness and make informed decisions
9. Nurture connections within General Mills’ global packaging community, to share knowledge, exchange on technical challenges and align on corporate packaging initiatives execution
What you will bring to the team
Skills/Experiences
10. Bachelor’s Degree in packaging, mechanical engineering, or relevant engineering discipline.
11. Minimum 4 years of related experience in Packaging Development, Packaging Engineering and / or Packaging Technology.
12. Experience in packaging development for food thermal application (tin, jar)
13. Demonstrated ability to lead new packaging ideation, development and commercialization interfacing with multiple stakeholders.
14. Deep technical knowledge of interactions between product, packaging and equipment and ability to apply scientific and engineering principles to deliver new packaging solutions.
15. Experience with quality and regulatory considerations and practices
16. Structural Package/Creative design ability preferred
17. Project management skills.
18. Consumer-First thinking; experience with applying design thinking practices
19. Strong written and verbal communication and interpersonal skills
20. Solid judgement, effective experimentation, analytical and problem-solving skills
21. Languages proficiency: excellent command of English and French, both written and spoken.
What you get from us
At General Mills, we are committed to recruiting, retaining, developing, and advancing an inclusive workforce that reflects the diversity of the consumers and communities we serve globally. Come and be part of our team's journey. Hungry to Shape the Future