Product Development Manager

The Product Development Manager owns the execution of product development initiatives from early feasibility through commercialization handoff. This role sits at the intersection of Sales, Purchasing, Compliance, Marketing, and Operations, ensuring that customer-led and highest-priority product projects move forward with clarity, discipline, and accountability.

• Design, implement, and own a centralized, automated product development tracking system that enforces process discipline across teams, provides real-time visibility into status and ownership, and drives accountability through automated aging, reminders, and escalation triggers.
• Qualify, document, and prioritize incoming product requests based on established guidelines.
• Lead recurring product development meetings, set agendas, document decisions, and assign clear follow-up actions.
• Coordinate cross-functional collaboration across Sales, Purchasing, Procurement, Compliance, Marketing, Finance, and Operations.
• Act as the primary coordinator for supplier feasibility inputs in partnership with Purchasing.
• Ensure pricing, MOQ, lead time, availability, and technical feasibility inputs are gathered and documented.
• Identify stalled initiatives, bottlenecks, risks, or ownership gaps and escalate with recommended paths forward.
• Ensure products meet internal readiness criteria before entering active customer conversations.
• Partner with Sales to understand customer product needs, translate opportunities into executable commercialization paths, and provide ongoing visibility into product development and launch timing to enable successful placements.
• Keep Sales informed of product commercialization activity to ensure potential opportunities are identified early and alignment is gained to enable successful placements.
• Conduct post-launch performance reviews and document learnings to inform future development decisions.
• Lead key cross-functional projects that involve new or existing product development or management.

• 4–7 years of experience in product development, commercialization, or cross-functional project leadership within CPG or specialty food.
• Experience with marketing automation platforms (Hub Spot, Monday, Airtable, Notion).
• Fluency in Spanish and/or Italian is a benefit.
• Clear, confident communicator who can align teams without formal authority.
• Highly organized with a bias toward action and seeks clarity when faced with ambiguity.