Product Development Manager - Beauty & Personal Care

About Us

Avenir Collective - Building the future of beauty, personal care and lifestyle brands.

We're building a new kind of consumer brand platform focused on trusted products, long-term value and meaningful growth. If you're excited by building brands, solving problems and working alongside collaborative, driven people, we'd love to hear from you.

The role

As a Product Development Manager, you will play a key role in leading innovation, reformulation and product optimization across our Beauty & Personal Care portfolio. Your main focus will be managing multiple projects from concept through to launch, transforming consumer insight, market trends, and commercial opportunities into high-quality, scalable products delivered across global omnichannel markets

Partnering closely with Brand, Compliance, Supply Chain, Creative, Commercial teams, and with external manufacturers, laboratories and packaging partners, you will ensure every product is commercially viable, compliant, profitable and scalable.  This role is ideal for someone who is commercially minded and highly organised, with a passion for developing exceptional beauty products. Your work will directly shape our Beauty & Personal Care portfolio, helping to bring exciting new products to customers around the world.

Key Responsibilities

Innovation & Portfolio Development 

• Lead multiple NPD projects across skincare, personal care, cosmetics, wellness and beauty tools from concept through commercial launch. 

• Drive innovation pipelines and product roadmaps, using consumer insight, market trends, competitor analysis, and commercial data to identify new opportunities.

• Develop product concepts and briefs that balance consumer needs, brand strategy, commercial viability, and speed to market. 

• Optimise the product portfolio through reformulation, product enhancements, premiumisation, range rationalisation, and margin improvement. 

• Build business cases, define pricing recommendations, and monitor product performance against commercial and innovation KPIs.

Technical Development, Claims & Consumer Validation  

• Manage formulation and reformulation programmes with manufacturing partners, from technical brief through to commercial production. 

• Evaluate ingredients, formulations, packaging compatibility, performance, manufacturability, and cost to ensure products meet consumer, technical, and commercial requirements. 

• Lead product benchmarking, consumer testing, and validation programmes to inform development and support substantiated product claims in partnership with Brand and Compliance.

Supplier Management & Commercialisation 

• Manage OEM, ODM, laboratory, and packaging partners, leading supplier performance, commercial negotiations, and continuous improvement initiatives. 

• Partner with Brand, Commercial, Supply Chain, and Creative teams to deliver commercially viable products and packaging across retail, wholesale, DTC, and marketplace channels. 

• Define product specifications, quality standards, and production readiness, using post-launch performance and consumer feedback to drive continuous improvement.

Programme Management & Leadership  

• Lead project governance, critical paths, budgets, risks, and development documentation, ensuring projects are delivered on time and to agreed objectives. 

• Coordinate internal and external stakeholders to resolve challenges, maintain momentum, and ensure successful product launches. 

• Champion continuous improvement across product development processes, fostering a collaborative, consumer-centric, and data-driven innovation culture.

About You

• 4–8 years’ experience in beauty, cosmetics, skincare, personal care or wellness product development, with proven end-to-end ownership of multiple concurrent NPD projects.

• Strong hands-on experience in formulation and reformulation, consumer and competitor benchmarking, product evaluation and claims substantiation.

• Experience working with global manufacturers, laboratories and packaging suppliers, with sound knowledge of stability, compatibility, scale-up and commercial manufacturing processes.

• Strong commercial judgement, including experience balancing consumer performance, cost, margin, speed to market and omnichannel requirements.

• Excellent project, critical path and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence cross-functional teams and manage competing priorities in a fast-paced environment.

• Passion for beauty innovation, consumer behaviour and category growth, supported by confident use of insight, trend and performance data.

Benefits

• Generous Holiday: Enjoy 30 days of paid leave in addition to the 8 UK Bank Holidays.

• Flexible Working: Experience the best of both worlds with hybrid working options.

• Pension Scheme: Employee 5% and Employer 3% contribution.

• CycleScheme: Save 25-39% on cycle gear with no upfront payment and tax-efficient salary deductions.

• Techscheme: Save up to 12% on technology and pay in monthly tax-efficient installments.

• Private Medical Insurance: Our Vitality Health insurance offers broad-ranging coverage, including travel, vision, and dental.

• Flexi-Fridays: Choose a Friday each month to finish early and enjoy a longer weekend.

• Discretionary bonus based on company and individual performance.

• Work Abroad for one month a year.

• Mental Health Support: Access for free to confidential therapists and counsellors through our partnership with Spill.

• Events: Quarterly All-Hands meetings, celebrations of key dates and holidays, and sponsored team activities.

Avenir Collective is proud to be a disability-committed employer registered in the UK. If you identify as having a disability and meet all of the criteria set out in the job description, we would like to support you through the interview stage. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive work environment where all employees and applicants can flourish.