Head of Sales, Baking & Food, SEA

Interested in a career that matters?

Join us as Head of Sales, Baking & Food, Southeast Asia, and become the commercial growth leader for one of the most exciting and strategically important regions in Food & Beverage Biosolutions.

Southeast Asia offers a unique combination of strong market growth, evolving customer needs, increasing competition, and significant opportunities for differentiation. Success in this environment requires deep customer intimacy, commercial excellence, strategic market shaping, and disciplined execution.

As Head of Sales, Baking & Food SEA, you will lead a high-performing commercial organization focused on accelerating growth, strengthening customer partnerships, and capturing emerging opportunities across the region. This is a unique opportunity to influence regional strategy, develop commercial capabilities, and create lasting impact in one of Novonesis' most important growth markets.

The Role & Your Impact

As the commercial leader for Baking & Food in Southeast Asia, you will be responsible for delivering commercial growth, driving customer engagement, and leading a regional team focused on profitable and sustainable business expansion.

Commercial Growth Leadership

• Lead the Southeast Asia Baking & Food business and deliver growth, profitability, and strategic objectives.
• Build strong customer intimacy across key accounts and priority markets.
• Translate customer, market, and competitive insights into actionable growth opportunities.
• Drive disciplined execution of commercial priorities and account plans.

Strategic Customers & Market Development

• Establish and maintain executive-level relationships with strategic customers.
• Strengthen Novonesis' position as a trusted innovation and biosolutions partner.
• Support market development through customer engagement, industry partnerships, and thought leadership activities.

Commercial Excellence & Go-to-Market

• Lead pricing, contract negotiations, and value-based selling initiatives.
• Optimize go-to-market effectiveness and customer coverage across Southeast Asia.
• Drive excellence in opportunity management, forecasting, and account planning.
• Allocate resources effectively to maximize competitive advantage and business impact.

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Collaborate closely with Marketing, Technical Services, R&D, Regulatory, Supply Chain, and Global Account teams.
• Champion innovation opportunities and support successful commercialization initiatives.
• Translate strategic priorities into actionable regional plans.

People Leadership

• Lead, coach, and develop a high-performing regional commercial team.
• Build capabilities in value selling, account management, pricing, and negotiation.
• Foster a culture of accountability, collaboration, inclusion, and customer centricity.
• Develop future commercial leaders within the organization.

What You'll Need to Be Successful

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Sales, Marketing, Food Science, Biotechnology, Business, or a related field.
• Minimum 5 years of commercial leadership experience within Food Ingredients, Food Technologies, Biotechnology, Food Manufacturing, Ingredient Distribution, or similar industries.
• Proven experience delivering profitable growth across multiple Southeast Asian markets.
• Strong track record of identifying and capturing growth opportunities in competitive environments.
• Experience managing complex commercial negotiations and regional account strategies.
• Demonstrated success in leading, coaching, and developing high-performing teams.
• Experience in revenue management, forecasting, budgeting, and business planning.
• Strong stakeholder management and collaboration skills across functions and geographies.
• Excellent communication, influencing, and relationship-building capabilities.

Additional Skills & Interests We Value

• Experience within the baking, food ingredients, or broader food and beverage sectors.
• Understanding of biosolutions, fermentation, enzymes, cultures, or related technologies.
• Experience supporting innovation commercialization and market development activities.
• Familiarity with value-selling methodologies and strategic account management.
• Passion for science-based innovation and sustainable business growth.
• Experience working in a highly matrixed, regional organization.

What We Offer

At Novonesis, you'll join a purpose-driven organization where biology enables solutions to some of the world's biggest challenges.

We offer:

• The opportunity to shape a strategically important growth business.
• Exposure to regional and global leadership teams.
• A collaborative and innovative working environment.
• Opportunities to influence business strategy and market development.
• Ongoing professional development and leadership growth.
• A culture built on trust, collaboration, innovation, and purpose.

Ways of Working

• Preferred location: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
• Regional role supporting customers and teams across Southeast Asia.
• Hybrid working model aligned with local Novonesis policies.
• Regular travel across Southeast Asian markets.
• Significant collaboration with regional and global stakeholders.

Our purpose guides the way

In Novonesis, we know that solutions rooted in biology can help solve humanity’s biggest challenges. Since we began more than a century ago, this has been our guide. It’s how we've gotten so far. And it’s how we'll impact the future. Now, more than ever, the world needs change. And with biosolutions, the possibilities for transformation are endless. If our purpose resonates with you, we encourage you to apply.

Opportunities for everyone

We are committed to an inclusive recruitment process and equal opportunity for all applicants. Therefore we ask you to apply without a cover letter or photo and instead include a few sentences in your CV explaining your motivation for applying.

We make all employment decisions based on business needs and welcome candidates with a wide range of backgrounds, including ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, or veteran status.

Explore other openings

If this position isn’t the right fit, you may still find other opportunities with us. You’re welcome to explore open roles or create a job agent to stay connected with future opportunities at novonesis.com/Career

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Choose a career that matters - and never miss an opportunity to make a difference.

Our History

In 2024, Chr. Hansen and Novozymes joined forces to form Novonesis.

We are 10,000 people worldwide whose expertise spans more than 30 different industries. All around the world our biosolutions already create value for thousands of customers and benefit the planet. Our biosolutions enable feeding and fueling the world more sustainably, from healthy and sustainable nutrition to biofuel. Our biosolutions also reduce the use of fossil-based resources, chemicals, energy and water. And this is just the beginning.