Associate Manager, CMI Cooking Aids and Mini Meals

Associate Manager, Consumer & Market Insights, Knorr Cooking Aids & Mini Meals

Background & Purpose of the Job

Knorr is one of the world's most trusted food brands and plays a central role in helping consumers create flavorful, affordable, and convenient meals at home. Across Cooking Aids and Mini Meals, we are focused on driving sustainable growth by strengthening our core business, accelerating innovation, expanding relevance with diverse consumer segments, and unlocking new eating occasions.

As consumer needs continue to evolve amid increasing demands for value, convenience, flavor, and inspiration, understanding people and translating those insights into business action has never been more important. Consumer & Market Insights serves as a strategic growth partner, helping the business identify opportunities, make better decisions, and build products, communications, and experiences that resonate with consumers.

We are looking for someone passionate about consumers, food culture, innovation, and growth. This individual will combine curiosity, analytical thinking, and strong business acumen to uncover actionable insights that shape strategic decisions and fuel growth across the Knorr portfolio. They will identify emerging opportunities, understand unmet consumer needs, and translate learning into clear recommendations that influence innovation, brand building, and business strategy.

Who You Are & What You’ll Do

The Associate Manager, Consumer & Market Insights, Knorr Cooking Aids & Mini Meals (CAMM) will be a key member of the North America Foods Consumer & Market Insights team. This role will support the US Knorr business, partnering closely with Marketing, R&D, Sales, Category Strategy, and Finance to drive growth through consumer-centric decision making.

The individual will lead and influence a broad range of insight initiatives spanning innovation, brand strategy, category growth, consumer understanding, and business performance. They will design and manage both quantitative and qualitative research programs, translate business challenges into actionable learning plans, and synthesize multiple data sources into compelling stories that drive action.
This role requires someone who can move seamlessly between strategic thinking and execution, connecting consumer, shopper, category, and market insights to identify growth opportunities and shape business decisions. The successful candidate will be comfortable working in a fast-paced environment, influencing cross-functional stakeholders, and championing the voice of consumers across the organization.

Primary Responsibilities
• Identify & integrate consumer insights into various innovation projects.
• Partner with cross-functional stakeholders to align insight projects with the strategic priorities of the US Foods business and Knorr growth agenda.
• Lead consumer and market insight workstreams supporting the US Knorr Cooking Aids and Mini Meals business, including innovation, renovation, and growth initiatives.
• Translate internal briefs and questions into analytical projects (includes refining the initial ask and asking the ‘right questions’, working through potential hypotheses and storyboarding the output)
• Provide qualitative and quantitative analysis and insight to inform business strategy, innovation, renovation, and future strategic product development. Lead meta learnings to synthesize overarching research findings
• Lead research projects from brief creation, through supplier selection, study design, interpreting results and providing actionable recommendations to the cross-functional team
• Be responsible for building and developing relationships with the global Innovation & CMI teams and across key business partners including Research & Development, Marketing, and Finance
• Understand category and competitive landscape and bring outside-in inspiration to guide more impactful innovation and drive business change
• Pilot new methods & approaches, technology, and new suite of research toolkits across categories
• Bring together multiple sources of learning including consumer research, household panel data, retail data, social listening, and marketplace trends to develop actionable business recommendations.
• Identify growth opportunities across consumer segments, occasions, channels, and need states.
• Influence business decisions through clear storytelling, synthesis, and recommendations grounded in consumer understanding.
• Help shape long-term category and portfolio strategy by identifying emerging trends and unmet consumer needs.
• Drive learning agendas that support both near-term business delivery and long-term growth opportunities.

What You’ll Need To Succeed
• Undergraduate degree required.
• Demonstrated high performance, 3+ years of experience in relevant work experience; Innovation research experience is a must
• Understanding of market research and research tools & methodologies
• Passion for innovations, trends and creativity
• Connected externally with the latest competitive moves, innovation ideas and trends and acting with speed & agility in landing them in the business
• Strong understanding of quantitative and qualitative research methodologies and when to apply them.
• Ability to synthesize multiple data sources into clear, compelling stories and recommendations.
• Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills.
• Demonstrated curiosity about consumers, culture, food, and marketplace trends.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities and thrive in a fast-paced environment.
• Experience with innovation, brand strategy, category growth, or consumer understanding preferred.
• Excellent communication, storytelling, and presentation skills.

Pay: The pay range for this position is $88,600 to $133,000. Unilever takes into consideration a wide range of factors that are utilized in making compensation decisions including, but not limited to, skill sets, experience and training, licensure and certifications, qualifications and education, and other business and organizational needs.

Bonus: This position is bonus eligible.

Benefits: Unilever employees are eligible to participate in our benefits plan. Should the employee choose to participate, they can choose from a range of benefits to include, but is not limited to, health insurance (including prescription drug, dental, and vision coverage), retirement savings benefits, life insurance and disability benefits, parental leave, sick leave, paid vacation and holidays, as well as access to numerous voluntary benefits. Any coverages for health insurance and retirement benefits will be in accordance with the terms and conditions of the applicable plans and associated governing plan documents.

Earlier this year (March 2026), Unilever announced an agreement to separate our Foods business. Our Foods business, including brands such as Hellmann's and Knorr, will join forces with McCormick to become a global flavour leader, with leading positions across spices, seasonings, condiments and complementary food categories, supported by a strong retail and foodservice platform. McCormick has 135+ years of heritage, a presence in 150+ countries and territories, and a portfolio of trusted brands. The transaction remains subject to consultation, regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions with a targeted deal close of mid-2027.

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