Senior Director, Product Development - Global Tea

Location: Singapore

Role Type: People Leader/ Manager

Please note: This role is not a fully remote position. The selected candidate will need to be based in Singapore and follow our hybrid work setup—3 days onsite and 2 days working from home each week. This is a People Leader/ Manager position.

Our APAC Innovation Centers sits at the heart of The Coca-Cola Company’s next chapter of growth. We are committed to transforming and evolving our organization and ambitions — bringing our people closer to the consumer, continuously raising the bar, and embracing digitalization to enable sustainable growth.

We are looking for a transformational leader to build, inspire, and empower high-performing teams that fuel the innovation pipeline with bold ideas and turn them into real-world impact. This role is not about maintaining the status quo; it is about setting direction, unlocking opportunity, and driving valuable breakthrough innovation at scale. You will lead diverse teams with deep expertise to deliver a strong and balanced portfolio of meaningful innovation — accelerating growth and shaping the future of the organization.

As Senior Director, Global & ASP TEA , you will lead and develop a team of talented product developers, setting the strategy for product development in your category and prioritizing resources to deliver key initiatives. You will oversee a portfolio of high‑impact beverage innovations, ensuring concepts are translated into commercially viable products through strong technical rigor and cross‑functional collaboration. You will also build and drive a robust Global 3–5‑year innovation pipeline in close partnership with Global Marketing and RTE (Research to Experiment) for your category for all OU’s together with the other Innovation Centers. This role balances strategic leadership with technical stewardship, coaching leaders, building team capability, and shaping critical decisions across formulation, quality, regulatory, and manufacturing readiness

What You’ll Do

Global Scope

• Develop product innovation strategies to deliver 3–5-year pipeline for growth plans for Global Tea category across all Operating Units (OU).

• Collaborate closely with Research to Experimentation and Global Supply Chain teams to design and develop scalable solutions for next generation of category products.

• Responsible for identifying and enabling the execution of the next RtE pipeline that can help step change of the growth of the categories.

• Collaborate deeply with global and regional SRA teams to get ahead of novel ingredients approval through appropriate agencies and unlock the use of new breakthrough ingredients in category.

• Deliver impactful programs to deliver against Category Strategy in long range plans and beyond.

• Partner with GDI Innovation Center peers to leverage project management routines to deliver global innovations with local consumer relevance.

• Ensure technical efforts on category are informed by consumer insights, business models and important technology trends to deliver advantaged solutions.

• Establish and maintain process and routines for cross functional inclusion in technical innovation strategy development, planning and project execution.

• Monitor external environment to identify and action on threats and opportunities for the category.

• Define and orchestrate the network for optimal people resourcing to deliver global pipelines.

• Lead and direct a multi-functional technical team focused on the Global pipeline for the Global category.

Regional Scope - ASEAN & South Pacific (ASP)

• Adapt global technical roadmaps into products, packaging, and processes with local resonance and regulatory alignment.

• Align on the prioritized initiatives for the category with OU Innovation Hub and Global category Leads.

• Prioritize and manage resources to deliver committed plans.

• Develop products for consumer test with the best ingredients and process to enable superiority, scalability, and profitability.

• Champion a culture of creativity, speed, and excellence in product development.

• Ensure Stage Gate process compliance.

• Anticipate and mitigate risks — from formulation stability to regulatory compliance — before they affect launch.

• Transfer critical technical knowledge to plants and market teams to deliver flawless, first-time-right execution.

• Drive project post-review and translate learning to an action plan for continuous improvement.

• Partner with OU Hub and Category Leads to fuel the 3-5 years pipeline

• Introduce digital efficiencies that enhance speed, reduce complexity, and elevate quality.

What We’re Looking For

• Bachelor’s/Master’s in Food Science, Chemistry, Nutrition, Chemical Engineering, or similar.

• 15+ years delivering successful product innovation in FMCG/beverage/food, including senior leadership experience.

• Proven track record of turning insights into market-leading products.

• Strategic thinker with strong cross-cultural leadership, stakeholder influence, and commercial acumen.

• Ability to:

  • Set up strategy and translate strategy into clear team priorities and executable plans.

  • Stay on top of technical, consumer and competitive trends and insights.

  • Encourage creativity within the team and removes barriers to idea generation. Build 'out-side in" capability in the team.

  • Ensure the team applies the right expertise to deliver strong outcomes.

  • Lead the team through complex problem-solving and trade-off decisions.

  • Lead, motivate, and develop a team to deliver consistent results. High level X- functional leadership

  • Make people and business decisions impacting team performance and business delivery (High Global impact and multi-year)

• Fluent in English; regional languages a plus.

• Global travel up to 25%.

Candidate Attributes

Critical to our growth is the development and recruitment of modern technical leaders who will demonstrate specific growth behaviours. The key candidate attributes we will be seeking are:

• Curious — Keep seeking, never settle.

Staying curious about what is outside, and two steps ahead inspires us to challenge the status quo. Having the courage to look and leap is the way we grow. Because asking “what if?” pushes us to the next level as people and as a company.

• Empowered — Make it happen.

True empowerment is the result of taking responsibility. This means giving yourself permission to see it, say it and do it, and owning the outcomes. Because we move forward faster when we all take action.

• Agile — Push for progress, not perfection.

There are very few overnight successes. Greatness is borne of many little victories (and failures). Share v 1.0, test it, and make it better. Then create the next version. Because the moment we think something is perfect, it will be obsolete.

• Inclusive — Include, value, and trust each other.

We are smart alone but together we are genius. This means being inclusive, giving the benefit of the doubt and being responsible for each other. Because, for our company to thrive for the next 100+ years, smart is not enough. We need genius.

Broad Expertise In

• Strong program management skills, including experience of multidisciplinary/stakeholder projects, and ability to deliver project objectives with tight deadlines

• Strong insights generation and external capability

• Operating Unit Experience

• Multinational company working experience

• Global experience with oversea working time more than 18 months

Functional Skills

• Beverage Product Development or strong food product development with global supply chain advantages, competitive edge and IP protection incorporated.

• Front end innovation

• Innovation Portfolio creation and management

• End to end innovation delivery

Why Join Us?

• Impact at Scale: Shape products enjoyed by millions across diverse APAC markets.

• Global Connectivity: Access world-class technical expertise, innovation labs, and global R&D networks.

• Digital Future: Lead with next-gen tools — from AI-driven formulation insights to virtual product design.

• Creative Freedom: Drive innovation that blends science, consumer desire, and brand vision.

• Legacy: Be part of a team building the future of beverages, with agility, ambition, and excellence.

What can help you to be successful in the role?

Growth Behavior

• Growth Mindset: Demonstrates Curiosity. Welcomes failure as a learning opportunity.

• Smart Risk: Makes bold decisions/recommendations.

• Commercially Focused: Understands the upstream and downstream implications of his/her work.

• Performance Driven & Accountable: Has high performance standards. Outperforms her/his peers.

• Fast/Agile: Removes barriers to move faster. Experiments and adapts. Thrives under pressure and fast pace.

• Empowered: Brings solutions instead of problems. Challenges the status quo. Has the courage to take an unpopular stance.

Leadership Behavior

• Act Like an Owner: Deliver results, creating value for our brands, our System, our customers and key stakeholders.

• Collaborate with the System, Customers and Key Stakeholders

• Develops Self and Others: Develop self and support others' development to achieve their full potential.

• Drive Innovation: Generate new or unique solutions and embrace new ideas that help sustain our business.

What We Can Do For You

• Career growth and development: Leveraging our boundaryless network, we provide access to educational platforms and provide coaching, mentoring and feedback, as a part of our Leadership & Development process.

• Diverse and inclusive culture: You’ll be embraced for who you are and empowered to use your voice to help others find theirs. We want to make our culture inevitable.

• International Experience: Become part of international projects and work along multicultural teams, through our global network.

Location(s)

Singapore

City/Cities

Singapore

Travel Required

00% - 25%

Relocation Provided

Yes

Job Posting End Date

August 28, 2026

Our Purpose and Growth Culture

We are taking deliberate action to nurture an inclusive culture that is grounded in our company purpose, to refresh the world and make a difference. We act with a growth mindset, take an expansive approach to what’s possible and believe in continuous learning to improve our business and ourselves. We focus on four key behaviors – curious, empowered, inclusive and agile – and value how we work as much as what we achieve. We believe that our culture is one of the reasons our company continues to thrive after 130+ years. Visit Our Purpose and Vision to learn more about these behaviors and how you can bring them to life in your next role at Coca-Cola.

Annual Incentive Reference Value Percentage:30

Annual Incentive reference value is a market-based competitive value for your role. It falls in the middle of the range for your role, indicating performance at target.