Product Developer
£38,000 - £44,000 plus benefits, including company car (Work Level 6A) 

8-month fixed term contract

Manchester City Centre, in this role you’ll work in a hybrid way splitting your time between home, the office and supplier sites as required (find out more about our hybrid working policy at colleagues.coop.co.uk/hybrid-working-policy). 

We’re looking for a Product Developer to join our Co-op Brand team to help us to deliver own brand products that delight our customers and keep up with their changing needs. In this role, you’ll research and deliver innovative, high quality, great value for money products, aligned to our strategy across an 18–24-month planning horizon. 

We’ll look to you to build positive relationships with key partners and collaborate with cross-functional internal teams and our supplier base. You’ll analyse insight to understand future opportunities and continually review the market, our supply base, and our competitors to help shape and deliver the future of our own brand proposition. This is an amazing opportunity to gain valuable exposure and see the products you develop in thousands of Co-op stores across the UK.

What you’ll do

• Work as part of our product development teams, to create innovative, high quality, customer-centric products
• Interpret internal and external sources of data, insights, and trends to create product ranges and Innovation appropriate to the Co-op customer.
• Build relationships and influence a range of key partners within our supplier base, trading teams, and technical teams
• Attend factory visits to attend product trials, understand manufacturing capabilities and future opportunities, feeding this back to the team and business
• Keep up to date with the wider retail landscape, keeping in tune with market trends and competitor performance with a focus on delivering efficiencies 
• Consider commercial implication throughout the development process, making sure the products you develop taste great and deliver against our high-quality standards
• Be a brand ambassador for the Co-op brand range

This role would suit people who have

• Knowledge and experience of working in the food industry, ideally across varied temperature regimes 
• A passion for food and innovation with the ability to taste and analyse food
• Strong communication skills with the ability to build positive relationships across all business 
• Creative thinking, with strong commercial insight and understanding
• Deep customer and category knowledge with the ability to analyse and interpret data

Why Co-op? 

If you have the skills that we need, we can offer you a competitive salary and great benefits package which includes 30% off Co-op branded products in our food stores (as well as other discounts on Co-op products and services). 

• An annual bonus (based on personal and business performance) 
• 28 days holiday (rising to 32 with service) plus bank holidays  
• A pension with up to 10% employer contributions 
• Private healthcare for you and your family  
• Access to a subsidised onsite gym (at our Manchester HQ) 
• Coaching and training to support your career development 
• Wagestream app – giving you access to a percentage of your pay as you earn 

At Co-op, we’re proud to do things a different way. As one of the world’s largest co-operatives, owned by millions of members, community is at the heart of what we do. Since our Co-op was founded in 1844, we’ve had a clear social purpose, and everything we do as a business helps to build a fairer world for our members, customers, colleagues, and communities.  

Building a diverse environment

We’re actively building diverse teams and we welcome applications from everyone. If you have a disability, we can make reasonable adjustments to our recruitment process according to your needs. We're also part of the Disability Confident scheme, meaning we'll always offer an interview to disabled candidates who apply through the scheme if they meet the minimum criteria for a job. 

We'll ask whether you’d like to be considered under the Disability Confident scheme when you apply. 

If we invite you to take part in the recruitment process for any of our jobs, we’ll ask you if you need any reasonable adjustments to enable you to participate. 

You can find out more about our recruitment process at jobs.coop.co.uk/apply-process

You can find out more about the Disability Confident scheme and all our commitments to diversity and inclusion at colleagues.coop.co.uk/diversity-inclusion-and-wellbeing

As part of your application, you'll need to complete an online assessment. This assessment typically takes between 45-60 minutes. 

Please be aware we may close the application window for this role early