Senior Manager, BD Excellence - Innovation and R&D

Position Summary

The Senior Manager, BD Excellence - R&D and Innovation, UCC will partner directly with the UCC R&D leadership team to accelerate innovation, product-development velocity, and predictable execution while maintaining quality, safety, and regulatory rigor. Reporting to the Senior Director, BD Excellence - UCC, this leader will help design and deploy the operating system, capabilities, and continuous improvement practices required to move priority products from consumer and customer insight through innovation, development, and launch with greater speed and discipline.

The role will connect Upstream Marketing, Innovation, Engineering, Program Management, Quality, Regulatory, Operations, and Commercial partners to improve technical and market readiness, clarify scope and decision rights, strengthen schedules and resource plans, and rapidly resolve barriers. A particular focus will be enabling UCC to operate as both a MedTech and consumer-focused product company, translating unspoken user needs into rapid prototypes, learning cycles, and a sustained pipeline of meaningful product and service innovations.

Key Responsibilities

• Partner with UCC R&D and Innovation leaders to support and deploy the BD Excellence strategy, operating model, and improvement priorities for speed to market and portfolio vitality.
• Support the deployment and continuous improvement of the innovation and NPD operating system that improves readiness, scope clarity, schedule quality, critical-path execution, decision speed, and launch predictability.
• Deploy Obeya, visual project management, velocity scorecards, operating reviews, and escalation mechanisms that create cross-functional transparency, accountability, and timely decisions.
• Lead and coach schedule Kaizens, critical-path challenge reviews, red-team peer reviews, hot washes, and structured Problem Solving Process work on priority programs and systemic barriers.
• Improve the quality of projects entering development by strengthening consumer and customer insight, technical and market readiness, prototyping, experimentation, and risk retirement.
• Partner with Program Management and functional leaders to improve resource visibility, reduce over-allocation, resolve critical capability gaps, and focus capacity on the vital few priorities.
• Help establish fit-for-purpose development pathways that simplify work and accelerate iteration for lower-risk products without compromising design controls, quality, safety, or regulatory requirements.
• Build capability in BD Excellence methods across R&D and Innovation through hands-on coaching, training, standard work, and development of practitioners who can sustain the system independently.
• Use time-to-market, design-iteration, milestone, resource, quality, and learning metrics to assess performance, trigger countermeasures, and standardize effective practices across UCC.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree
• 5 years of demonstrated experience in R&D, Innovation, Engineering, Program Management, Product Management, or product-development transformation.
• Demonstrated success leading complex, cross-functional product-development or innovation initiatives from insight and concept through design, transfer, launch, and learning.
• Experience improving development speed, schedule predictability, technical readiness, resource effectiveness, or portfolio execution while maintaining quality and compliance.
• Working knowledge of phase-gate product development, design controls, risk management, critical-path management, and the trade-offs among customer value, scope, time, cost, quality, and risk.
• Experience applying structured problem solving, Kaizen, visual management, Obeya, Lean product development, Agile, or related continuous improvement methods.
• Proven ability to influence senior leaders, technical experts, project teams, and external partners without direct authority.
• Experience working across innovation, product development, and commercialization functions to accelerate successful product launches and adoption.
• Willingness to travel domestically and internationally as business needs require.
• Ability to work effectively in a global, matrixed environment and engage teams at the Gemba.

Knowledge, Skills, and Leadership Profile

• Innovation and consumer mindset: starts with observed and unspoken user needs, converts insight into testable concepts, and values rapid learning and iteration.
• Systems thinker: connects portfolio strategy, product roadmaps, technical work, governance, resources, manufacturing, commercialization, and customer outcomes.
• Execution oriented: creates clarity on scope, milestones, decision rights, risks, owners, and next actions, and maintains urgency without sacrificing rigor.
• Technically credible and commercially aware: can engage engineering and scientific teams while keeping customer value, market readiness, and business impact visible.
• Curious and analytical: challenges assumptions, uses data to expose constraints, and focuses teams on root causes and the critical path.
• Pragmatic change leader: simplifies work, builds followership, and balances thoughtful risk-taking with quality, safety, and regulatory requirements.
• Coach and facilitator: develops others, creates constructive challenge, and builds cross-functional accountability in complex situations.
• Learning agile and resilient: adapts thinking as evidence changes and helps teams turn lessons learned into better standards and faster execution.

Preferred Qualifications

• Focus of bachelor's degree in Engineering, Science, Product Development, Business, or a related field
• Experience in MedTech, healthcare, consumer products, software-enabled devices, or another complex product-development environment strongly preferred

Additional information

At BD, we prioritize on-site collaboration because we believe it fosters creativity, innovation, and effective problem-solving, which are essential in the fast-paced healthcare industry. For most roles, we require a minimum of 4 days of in-office presence per week to maintain our culture of excellence and ensure smooth operations, while also recognizing the importance of flexibility and work-life balance. Remote or field-based positions will have different workplace arrangements which will be indicated in the job posting.