Global Innovation Manager

Build your career at Sazerac! With almost 400 years of rich history, Sazerac Company has thrived as an independent, American family-owned company with operations in the United States and around the world. Since the 2000s, Sazerac has averaged double digit growth every year! Sazerac Company produces and markets the most award-winning bourbons and whiskeys in the world, including Buffalo Trace, Pappy Van Winkle, Eagle Rare, Blanton’s, Traveller, and Sazerac Rye. Additionally, Sazerac owns many popular brands across a range of spirits, including Fireball, Svedka, Wheatley, BuzzBallz, Southern Comfort, Seagram’s V.O., Myers’s, Goldschläger, Parrot Bay, 99 Brand, and Platinum Vodka.

The Global Innovation Manager sits at the heart of our commercial engine within the Global Innovation & Commercialisation team, based in Lucerne, Switzerland. This position operates on a hybrid working pattern with no travel required. Reporting directly to the Director of Innovation & Commercialisation, this role drives end-to-end project execution across our global innovation pipeline, with a primary regional focus on Europe, Africa, AUS/NZ, LATAM, and Asia. The Global Innovation Manager leads multifunctional project execution from initial marketing concept all the way to the retail shelf.

Key Responsibilities

• Cross-Functional Leadership: Serve as the central execution link driving alignment across Brand Teams, Operations, Procurement, R&D, Regulatory, Legal, and regional Commercial partners.
• Influence Without Authority: Build trust and manage cross-functional partners effectively without direct line authority to hold multidisciplinary teams accountable to deliverables.
• Stakeholder Facilitation: Lead regular project status meetings, alignment sessions, and cross-departmental reviews to maintain transparent communication pathways across global time zones.
• Idea-to-Shelf Execution: Guide projects through all stage-gate commercialisation steps, including scope lock, design lock, artwork approvals, master data setup, sales enablement, production scheduling, and initial shipment logistics.
• Portfolio Control: Efficiently track, prioritise, and manage a varied project pipeline across multiple brand portfolios and maturity stages.
• Tactical Decision-Making & Risk Mitigation: Own project-level decisions, conduct options analysis, and proactively identify operational bottlenecks to build swift mitigation and contingency plans with leadership.
• Delivery Performance: Drive continuous improvement to optimise project delivery performance, ensuring product launches land on time, in full, and within budget parameters.
• Brand Growth & Range Optimisation: Support the global growth of Sazerac brands by expanding and optimising product ranges across primary focus markets in Europe, Africa, AUS/NZ, LATAM, and Asia.
• Process Optimisation: Streamline internal commercialisation workflows, capturing learnings to ensure best-in-class launch execution across all brand portfolios.

Required Qualifications

• Hands-on project management or commercialisation experience in FMCG, beverage alcohol, CPG, or manufacturing sectors (strictly physical goods/CPG - no IT, technology, insurance, or financial services backgrounds).
• Proven track record of managing physical products through an end-to-end commercialisation cycle from initial marketing idea all the way to shelf.
• Demonstrated ability to manage multi-project pipelines in a fast-paced environment.
• Strong cross-functional influencing, collaboration, and stakeholder management skills with the ability to lead teams without direct line authority.
• Exceptional attention to detail, planning, and organisational capabilities.
• Mature, resilient under pressure, and highly adaptable in a fast-evolving global business.
• Ability to work on a hybrid schedule based out of the Lucerne, Switzerland office.

Preferred Qualification

• Prior experience within the Beverage Alcohol industry or Spirits sector.
• Commercial exposure or foundational experience in Brand Management and marketing functions.
• Experience navigating commercialisation and product launches in Europe, Africa, AUS/NZ, LATAM, and Asia.
• Proficiency in MS Office (Excel, Word, PowerPoint) and quick adaptability to digital stage-gate platforms, workflow management systems, and ERP tools.