Product Development Manager

No Relocation Assistance Offered
146127 - Hout Bay, Western Cape, South Africa

We are Hill’s Pet Nutrition
- a caring, innovative growth company reimagining a healthier future for all people, their pets, and our planet. We are part of Colgate-Palmolive a leading global consumer products company with a portfolio in Oral, Personal, Home Care and Pet Nutrition.

At Hill's we have a purpose Every day around the world, we transform the lives of millions of pet families through groundbreaking innovation, outstanding nutrition, and committed people.

Our strong culture of collaboration, diversity, sustainability and inclusion is rooted in our core values of Caring, Local and Global Teamwork and Continuous Improvement. Employees are rewarded by rich career development, career experiences and possibilities.

We pride ourselves on our work life balance, our focus on delivering high ethical standards and our dedication to developing our employees. With many local benefits such as, Live Better activities, Discounted Products and Health Insurance.

**Job Summary**:
The role will be responsible for leading and managing development, digital and tech strategies focused on acquiring and retaining customers, CRM programmes, eCommerce development and integrations, training and rewards programmes, retailer support programmes, database warehousing and process simplification. You will craft the company's overall approach to these projects from start to finish and leading all aspects of multiple projects across functional stakeholders with third party development and design providers.

**Main Responsibilities**

Your role will encompass product management, project management, business management and relationship management including:

- Develop practical insights to find opportunities and pinpoint risks, understand requirements from internal stakeholders, retailers and pet parents.
- Seek innovative, creative digital /tech solutions supporting business strategy & challenges
- Responsible for ensuring that technical capabilities to fulfill our business strategy is in place.
- Ownership of development change within channels, documentation of functional requirements, responsible for quality of changes, including testing activities, transitioning projects to launch and ongoing administration.
- Conceptualize and brief feasible digital / tech solutions, including dev requirements, front end UX and all technical and functional requirements.
- Own the development lifecycle processes from conception to implementation.
- Collaborate with the Shopper Marketing Manager and design agency to ensure all artwork, copy and support materials for a successful launch are in place.
- Brief third-party Tech/software providers and lead a detailed project scope and achievement plan to ensure that projects are delivered timely, within the scope and within budget. Problem solve and manage all risks.
- Balance delivery priorities, track progress; tackle obstacles to keep the project on track.
- Lead and coordinate: Testing & Quality Assurance, Design and Marketing, Product Management and Development, Stakeholder Relationship Management to ensure project status and progress is clear, signoff and meets deadlines.
- Plan and run sprint / super user onboarding sessions to ensure smooth rollout of projects.
- Assess progress and implementation, identify obstacles and refine plans and problem solve.
- Measure and report performance assessing measures against goals and providing insights and recommendations for improvement.
- Design analytics to measure consumer behaviour, operational trends, test theories around performance and drive initiatives.
- Set, allocate and coordinate budgets

**Required Qualifications**:

- A Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science/Engineering or similar field
- Minimum 5 years of experience in platform development, delivering projects, technical background or hands-on experience in Software Development and web technologies.
- A good understanding of the software development life cycle SDLC
- Good knowledge of web technologies, the.NET framework, and working within the online environment.
- A solid understanding of project management and development methodologies, such as PRINCE 2, SCRUM and Waterfall.
- Excellent knowledge of databases, database design, data analytics and statistics.

Equal Opportunity Employer
Colgate is an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, ethnicity, age, disability, marital status, veteran status (United States positions), or any other characteristic protected by law.

Colgate-Palmolive is a leading global consumer products company, tightly focused on Oral Care, Personal Care, Home Care and Pet Nutrition. Colgate sells its products in over 200 countries and territories around the world under such internationally recognized brand names as Colgate