Sr Mgr Packaging R&D

Why Hershey: At The Hershey Company, our culture is rooted in purpose and inspired by Milton Hershey’s enduring vision that business should create opportunity for others. Through our commitment to corporate philanthropy, we create positive impact by supporting communities, helping children thrive, and operating as a business for good. This includes our deep and long standing partnership with Milton Hershey School, where we invest in education, workforce readiness, and hands on engagement to help students succeed beyond the classroom. Supported by strategic grantmaking, product donations, cross brand collaboration, and strong employee volunteerism, Hershey offers a place to work where making a difference—locally and globally is part of how we do business every day.

The Hershey Company is an industry-leading snacks company known for making more moments of goodness through its iconic brands. With a strong portfolio across chocolate, confectionery, and salty snacks, Hershey delights consumers every day. Our beloved brands include Hershey’s, Reese’s, KitKat®, Dots Pretzels, Lesser Evil, Jolly Rancher, Twizzlers, Ice Breakers, and more. At Hershey, we are committed to making a meaningful difference in the communities where we live, work, and do business. This commitment originated with our founder, Milton Hershey, and continues to shape who we are today. Guided by our employee value proposition, Lead Today. Create Tomorrow, we empower our people to drive impact now while shaping what comes next. Our One Hershey mindset brings teams together across functions, geographies, and businesses, enabling us to operate with speed, collaboration, and shared purpose. The Hershey Company is proud to be recognized as a top employer in the United States, reflecting our commitment to our people, culture, and purpose. How will you fit in the big picture? Packaging plays a critical role in shaping growth at Hershey. As Front-of-Funnel Packaging Manager, you will bring packaging strategy and technical feasibility into the earliest stages of innovation, renovation, and portfolio planning. You will partner closely with R&D and Packaging Commercialization, along with Brand, Commercial, Insights, Supply Chain, Procurement, Manufacturing, Quality, Regulatory, and Sustainability, to translate business and consumer needs into packaging choices that are feasible, scalable, sustainable, cost‑conscious, and launch‑ready. What will you do? Shape upstream packaging strategy by defining opportunity spaces, technical guardrails, feasibility considerations, and implications during idea generation, concept development, portfolio planning, and strategic business decisions. Serve as a key bridge among Packaging, R&D, and Packaging Commercialization, aligning product design, packaging feasibility, validation, risk mitigation, launch readiness, and scale‑up requirements from the start. Translate consumer, customer, channel, sustainability, retail, e‑commerce, and operational needs into packaging design principles, success criteria, and technical decision criteria. Develop packaging options, scenarios, prototypes, supplier engagement plans, learning agendas, testing approaches, and risk assessments before commercialization begins. Lead cross‑functional alignment without relying on direct authority, framing trade‑offs, investment implications, risks, and recommendations for senior technical and business stakeholders. Resolve ambiguous, high‑impact packaging challenges by balancing technical performance, product protection, consumer experience, cost, speed‑to‑market, compliance, sustainability, and scalability. Build repeatable front‑of‑funnel tools, decision frameworks, playbooks, governance approaches, and technical capability across Packaging and partner functions. Minimum Education & Requirements