📦 We're Hiring: Packaging Development Manager
Location: United Arab Emirates (Remote)
Employment Type: Full-Time
Experience Level: Mid-Level to Senior
Work Arrangement: Fully Remote
About Us
We are a globally focused organization committed to developing high-performance, cost-effective, sustainable, compliant, and customer-focused packaging solutions across diverse products, markets, and distribution environments.
Our distributed teams collaborate across Product Development, Engineering, Manufacturing, Quality, Procurement, Supply Chain, Logistics, Marketing, Sustainability, Regulatory, Operations, and external packaging suppliers to deliver packaging that protects products, supports brand objectives, enables efficient manufacturing and distribution, and meets applicable market requirements.
The Role
We are seeking an experienced Packaging Development Manager to lead packaging strategy, packaging design, material development, structural engineering, artwork coordination, prototyping, testing, qualification, supplier development, cost optimization, sustainability, packaging industrialization, and continuous improvement.
The successful candidate will manage packaging development from initial concept through design, prototyping, testing, supplier qualification, manufacturing validation, commercialization, and lifecycle optimization.
Key ResponsibilitiesPackaging Development Strategy
- Develop and implement packaging-development strategies aligned with product, commercial, operational, quality, sustainability, and customer requirements.
- Establish packaging-development standards, processes, specifications, governance, and design principles.
- Develop packaging innovation and technology roadmaps.
- Identify opportunities to improve packaging performance, cost, sustainability, manufacturability, and customer experience.
Packaging Concept Development
- Lead development of packaging concepts for new and existing products.
- Translate product, customer, brand, logistics, regulatory, and manufacturing requirements into practical packaging solutions.
- Evaluate alternative packaging formats, structures, materials, and technologies.
Packaging Design
- Manage structural and functional packaging design activities.
- Ensure packaging designs provide appropriate:
- Product Protection
- Functionality
- Usability
- Manufacturability
- Transportability
- Shelf Performance
- Brand Alignment
Continuous Improvement
- Lead packaging-improvement programs focused on:
- Quality
- Cost
- Sustainability
- Efficiency
- Customer Experience
- Logistics
- Manufacturing Performance
Packaging Benchmarking
- Benchmark packaging performance against:
- Industry Standards
- Competitors
- Suppliers
- Internal Best Practices
- Emerging Technologies
Packaging Maturity
- Assess organizational maturity across:
- Design
- Materials
- Testing
- Supplier Management
- Sustainability
- Digitalization
- Quality
- Lifecycle Management
Team Leadership
- Lead Packaging Engineers, Packaging Designers, Development Specialists, Technical Project Managers, and related personnel where applicable.
- Establish objectives, technical standards, performance expectations, and development plans.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Work closely with:
- Product Development
- Engineering
- Manufacturing
- Quality
- Procurement
- Supply Chain
- Logistics
- Marketing
- Design
- Regulatory
- Sustainability
- Operations
Executive Reporting
- Provide senior leadership with regular reports covering:
- Packaging Development
- Project Status
- Packaging Quality
- Cost
- Supplier Performance
- Sustainability
- Launch Readiness
- Packaging Risks
- Innovation
- Improvement Programs
Key Performance Indicators
Performance may be measured through:
- Packaging development cycle time
- On-time packaging project delivery
- Packaging launch readiness
- First-time-right packaging approval
- Packaging qualification success rate
- Packaging test pass rate
- Packaging defect rate
- Packaging failure rate
- Packaging damage rate
- Packaging-related customer complaints
- Packaging-related returns
- Packaging-line efficiency
- Packaging-line compatibility
- Packaging process capability
- Packaging material yield
- Packaging waste rate
- Packaging scrap rate
- Packaging material consumption
- Packaging weight reduction
- Packaging volume reduction
- Lightweighting progress
- Recycled-content percentage
- Recyclability rate
- Reusable-packaging adoption
- Packaging carbon-footprint reduction
- Packaging lifecycle-impact reduction
- Pallet utilization
- Container utilization
- Logistics cube efficiency
- Transport damage reduction
- E-commerce packaging performance
- Consumer usability performance
- Supplier quality
- Supplier on-time delivery
- Supplier responsiveness
- Supplier innovation
- Supplier sustainability performance
- Packaging cost per unit
- Packaging cost reduction
- Value-engineering savings
- Material cost reduction
- Tooling cost optimization
- Packaging inventory reduction
- Packaging obsolescence reduction
- Packaging-change cycle time
- Artwork approval cycle time
- Specification accuracy
- Packaging documentation completeness
- Regulatory compliance
- Packaging audit performance
- Corrective-action closure
- Corrective-action effectiveness
- Packaging technology adoption
- Digital packaging adoption
- Automated inspection adoption
- Packaging innovation pipeline
- Packaging project ROI
- Packaging development productivity
- Packaging-team competency
- Training completion
- Continuous-improvement savings
Ideal Candidate
The successful candidate should have experience in Packaging Development, Packaging Engineering, Packaging Design, Product Development, Packaging Technology, Materials Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering, or related fields.
The candidate should demonstrate:
- Proven experience leading packaging-development programs across new product introduction, commercialization, manufacturing, and lifecycle management.
- Strong understanding of packaging structures, materials, manufacturing processes, testing, qualification, and supply-chain requirements.
- Experience developing primary, secondary, and tertiary packaging.
- Strong knowledge of paperboard, corrugated, flexible packaging, rigid plastics, glass, metal, films, laminates, protective materials, and sustainable packaging alternatives.
- Experience with structural packaging design, dielines, prototypes, packaging specifications, drawings, and technical documentation.
- Strong understanding of packaging testing including drop, compression, vibration, environmental, barrier, seal, dimensional, and transport testing.
- Experience with packaging-product compatibility, shelf-life protection, barrier performance, and packaging reliability.
- Experience with packaging-line trials, manufacturing validation, production ramp-up, and packaging industrialization.
- Strong understanding of design for manufacturing, design for assembly, packaging-machine compatibility, and production constraints.
- Experience managing packaging suppliers, tooling suppliers, testing laboratories, and technical service providers.
- Strong supplier-qualification and supplier-development capabilities.
- Experience with packaging cost engineering, value engineering, lightweighting, material optimization, and cost-reduction programs.
- Strong understanding of packaging sustainability, recyclability, recycled content, reuse, circularity, waste reduction, and lifecycle considerations.
- Experience with packaging artwork, labeling, multilingual requirements, regulatory coordination, and change control.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities with experience using packaging performance and quality data.
- Experience with digital packaging design, 3D modeling, simulation, rapid prototyping, automated inspection, or digital packaging technologies is advantageous.
- Experience with AI, computer vision, digital twins, advanced analytics, or smart/connected packaging is advantageous.
- Strong project-management skills and experience managing multiple packaging-development projects simultaneously.
- Experience leading Packaging Engineers, Designers, Development Specialists, or technical teams.
- Strong cross-functional collaboration skills across Engineering, Product, Manufacturing, Quality, Procurement, Supply Chain, Marketing, Regulatory, and Sustainability.
- Strong knowledge of packaging quality systems, specifications, testing, qualification, and audit requirements.
- Knowledge of UAE and GCC manufacturing, consumer, retail, logistics, regulatory, and packaging environments is advantageous.
- Relevant degree in Packaging Engineering, Materials Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Product Design, Manufacturing Engineering, or a related discipline.
- Professional certifications in packaging, project management, Lean Six Sigma, sustainability, quality, or related disciplines are advantageous.
- Strong written and verbal English communication skills; additional languages are advantageous.
- Excellent technical leadership, planning, stakeholder-management, analytical, and communication skills.
- Ability to translate product, customer, logistics, manufacturing, sustainability, and regulatory requirements into commercially viable packaging solutions.
- Ability to balance packaging performance, quality, cost, sustainability, manufacturability, logistics, and customer experience.
- Ability to manage complex packaging-development programs, suppliers, testing, tooling, budgets, technical risks, and competing priorities.
- Ability to work independently in a fully remote and internationally distributed environment.
- Strong packaging-focused, innovation-driven, technically rigorous, sustainability-conscious, commercially aware, customer-focused, quality-oriented, data-driven, collaborative, proactive, and results-driven mindset.