Title: Head of Product & Innovation
Location: Clonmel, Tipperary
Reporting Line: CEO
Job Type: Full-time
Industry: FMCG/Food Manufacturing
Our Company
Blanco Niño is a rapidly growing, award-winning, premium Mexican food brand known for exceptional quality, traditional cooking methods and its advocacy of regenerative farming practices.
The company's mission is to produce Mexican food products that make us proud and accelerate the transition to regenerative farming in the process.
The role mission is to ensure that Blanco Niño's current and future products consistently exceed customer expectations and meet our uncompromising quality standards, from early concept through to scaled production.
Our factory in Clonmel, Ireland is the heart of the business and critical to delivering the quality and consistency we're known for across retail and foodservice in 19 European markets, the UK and the Middle East. We manufacture a range of corn tortillas and tortillas chips for our foodservice customers, alongside tortilla chips sold into retail in five delicious flavours.
After 10 years of incredible success (and many learnings along the way) we are entering an exciting new chapter. We're expanding our product offering, investing in technological innovation and building scalable manufacturing processes that will allow us to further improve the high standards that define Blanco Niño. Ensuring our products can be made consistently at scale has never been more important and this role will be on the front lines.
The Opportunity
We're looking for an experienced, pragmatic and quality-driven leader to take responsibility for how our products are developed, made and continuously improved.
At Blanco Niño, quality is physical and measurable: it shows up in flavour, texture and consistency. This role exists to protect that quality as we scale, ensuring that growth never comes at the expense of what makes our products exceptional.
You'll lead the product and technical agenda on site in our factory, working closely with operations and commercial teams. You'll help shape which innovation ideas move forward, and how. You'll pressure-test them against manufacturing reality, and then lead their execution through robust, repeatable processes.
This role has real influence and accountability, with a direct reporting line to the CEO and a small but critical team reporting into you.
What You'll be Doing
Product Quality & Consistency
Your team will own end-to-end product quality across all manufactured products.
You will ensure consistency between batches and production runs through strong process design, control and validation.
You will investigate and resolve product or process issues at root-cause level.
You will define clear quality standards and ensure they are understood, measured and upheld on the factory floor.
Process Improvement & Manufacturing Excellence
You will lead continuous improvement initiatives across production processes, with a focus on robustness, repeatability and scalability.
You will use data, testing and structured problem-solving to reduce variation and improve process capability.
You will work closely with operations to embed best practice into day-to-day manufacturing.
You will support decisions on equipment, automation and process changes from a product-quality perspective.
New Product Development (NPD)
You will play a key role in shaping the future NPD roadmap, working in close partnership with the CEO.
You will evaluate new product ideas and concepts, as well as new formats for existing products, bringing a clear view on feasibility, quality risk and scalability.
You will lead the development and validation of new product-related processes.
You will oversee trials, scale-up activity and production validation, ensuring learnings are captured and applied.
You will ensure new products and formats can be delivered consistently to Blanco Niño's quality standards at scale.
Quality Assurance & Compliance
You will provide leadership and oversight of quality assurance on site.
You and your team will ensure the factory operates in line with relevant food safety, regulatory and customer standards (e.g. BRCGS or equivalent).
Your team will lead readiness for audits and customer technical reviews, ensuring the business is well prepared and confident.
You will continuously improve quality systems so they support manufacturing reality and product excellence, rather than becoming a tick-box exercise.
Team Leadership & Capability Building
You will line manage the Quality Assurance Manager and Production Development Technician.
You will build a culture of ownership, curiosity and continuous improvement within the product and quality function.
You will develop clear ways of working, priorities and accountability across the team.
You will be a visible, credible presence on the factory floor, leading by example.
Who You Are
This role is as much about the person as it is about the skills. This position requires a specific set of innate characteristics including strong judgment, perseverance, holistic and system thinking, and genuine obsession with getting to the route of a problem. You might recognise yourself in these traits:
You care deeply about how things are made and you have an eye for spotting when things could be done better.
You are comfortable operating both in the detail and thinking "big picture".
You use data and critical thinking to solve problems, while staying pragmatic about what really works in a factory.
You challenge assumptions and aren't satisfied with "good enough."
You take pride in building processes that run autonomously and deliver exceptional results consistently.
You are excellent at taking people with you on the journey and value empathy and trust above all else in your relationships.
Ideal Experience
You will have significant experience in food manufacturing, product development and process engineering.
You have experience launching new products or formats into production.
You will have strong working knowledge of food safety, HACCP principles and quality systems within a food manufacturing environment.
You will have experience operating within recognised food safety and quality standards (e.g. BRCGS or equivalent).
You will have confidence navigating EU and UK food regulations, including allergens, labelling and product compliance.
You will have experience leading and developing teams.
It would be a big plus if:
You also have formal advanced HACCP training (e.g. Level 4 or 5, or equivalent).
You have experience supporting or leading site audits and customer technical reviews.
You have experience working in growing or scaling food businesses.
Why Join Us
At Blanco Niño, you'll be part of a small, ambitious, and values-driven team making a real impact, not just in the food industry, but in the world of sustainable agriculture.
This role gives you the opportunity to shape how we manufacture products of exceptional quality at scale, supporting both today's production and the future of our products
Benefits
Competitive salary and bonus
Pension contribution
Generous product allowance (our chips are seriously tasty)