Head of Commercial

We're looking for a Head of Commercial who is experienced in the needs and nuances of grocery commercial sales, and category management with a strong sales record in either fresh proteins, alternative proteins, novel foods or related product launches.

You'll have a strong network of both commercial talent and retail customers across multiple channels (grocery, food service, CSR) with a meaningful track record in mass retail (e.g. Tesco, ASDA in the UK, or Albertsons and Kroger in the US).

This role and our brand require a leader who can demonstrate versatility, curiosity, high energy, and creativity. Bringing passion and skills from perishable food sales across domestic and international supply chains, strategic development, retail procurement, vendor management, and merchandising, you'll be a leader who can demonstrate the versatility, curiosity, high energy, and creativity that's integral to our brand.

As the face of our commercial team, you'll prioritise people and will structure, recruit and train a team of Uncommon talent focused on building a new and vital category in the food system - with the support of strong Marketing, Product and Leadership teams.

What you'll be doing:

• Creating commercial plans to align the manufacturing capabilities and sales goals.


• Defining, creating and activating our commercial pipeline and key requirements to drive upper and lower funnel sales goals from initial introduction to in-market.


• Managing relationships with key stakeholders to identify and deliver against the needs of prospective customers, devising tailored customer acquisition strategies.


• Contributing to the creation of the product pricing strategy and ensure the margins and value chain can return value for all parties involved.


• Working collaboratively across the business to ensure plans are realistic and appropriately supported.


• Developing and maintaining key customer relationships and leveraging key Uncommon leadership colleagues to ensure these relationships remain strong.


• Deep partnership with marketing leadership to execute pre, during and post-marketing support required to drive success at shelf or on-premise.


• Collaborating and maintaining clear communications with internal departments across marketing, product, finance and R&D.


• Sales KPIs and commercial P&L management - monitor and drive performance of commercial activities leveraging data and accountable for sales operations financial management (sales P&L, budget management).


• Team Management - scale up the commercial team based on growth requirements and hiring guidelines as aligned with the C-suite.
  
  Strong communication and interpersonal skills that invite open discussion and motivate teams.


• In-depth knowledge of the grocery industry, key trends and pain points to address.


• Previous experience in launching novel foods and challenger brands with a current network across buyers and decision-makers in both UK and US fresh food/ chilled food space across retailers and distributors.


• Strong relationships and track record with brokers and distributors


• Solid knowledge of performance reporting and financial/budgeting processes


• Excellent organizational and leadership skills


• Able to drive C-level as well as account manager-level conversations - you are strategic and yet able to execute flawlessly, with a high degree of commercial awareness.


• Strong attention to detail and ability to manage expectations both upwards and downwards.


• Comfortable building rigour and process where it has not existed before.
  
  Uncommon is a purpose-driven company, creating breakthrough technologies that will help solve some of the world's biggest health, sustainability and animal welfare challenges.


Our focus is on bringing superior cultivated pork products to market. At a time of growing inflation and shrinking natural resources, we believe that creative problem-solving is the most effective and sustainable way to address global growth in protein consumption.

Core to our approach is our uniquely designed product delivery platform and our patented pioneering RNA-powered strategies to cultivate meat without genetic modification. It's this approach and numerous other technological breakthroughs which position us to uniquely deliver nutritional and abundant protein products the market will crave.

Our brilliant team are experts in their respective fields, drawn from around the world. We're passionate, curious, innovative and at the forefront of the ground-breaking work being done in this exciting and rapidly growing sector. Uncommon is a well-funded biotech company, backed by some of the world's most admired investors. We've experienced spectacular growth over the last few years, reaching exciting milestones and we continue to grow every quarter.

Our main facility is based in Cambridge, UK, with future facilities and offices likely in other global markets.

Alongside a competitive base salary, all our people get these benefits:

• Share options


• 28 days annual leave (plus bank holidays)


• Enhanced parental leave pay


• Cycle-to-work scheme and wellbeing allowance


• Flexible hours


• "Make your work life easier" annual stipend


• Regular team dinners and social activities


• Snacks, fruits, tea, coffee and more!