Product Development Manager - Fragrance & Formulation

Role Overview

The Product Development Manager - Fragrance & Formulation leads the end-to-end development and commercialization of new products, translating product concepts, market trends, consumer insights, and fragrance opportunities into scalable, profitable, high-quality, and brand-aligned products.

This role bridges product development, fragrance and formulation, sourcing, quality, packaging, production, and brand teams, while working closely with fragrance houses, laboratories, and suppliers, to ensure seamless execution from initial concept through sampling, formulation, costing, testing, and commercialization, while meeting performance, compliance, quality, and timeline objectives.

The ideal candidate is a strategic and commercially minded product development professional with strong end-to-end product development experience and a practical understanding of fragrance development and formulation, raw materials, scented products, and fragrance delivery systems, with the ability to turn product ideas into high-quality, commercially viable, market-ready launches.

Key Responsibilities

Manage the full product development lifecycle from concept, sampling, costing, testing, and approval through bulk production and launch, ensuring products meet quality, commercial, and timeline objectives.

Lead and develop a high-performing Product Development team, providing strategic direction, coaching, and clear priorities while overseeing workload, development timelines, and execution to ensure successful delivery of product development objectives.

Coordinate fragrance and formulation development with fragrance houses, perfumers, laboratories, manufacturers, and suppliers, including fragrance evaluation, scent selection, formulation refinement, and product performance testing.

Translate product ideas, market trends, and consumer insights into commercially viable products. ensuring the right balance of quality, fragrance performance, safety, stability, cost, and scalability.

Manage product costings, BOMs, target margins, and development timelines, and critical paths to achieve commercial objectives.

Manage relationships with fragrance houses, laboratories, manufacturers, suppliers, and other development partners, while resolving development and pre-production issues to ensure smooth execution.

Ensure products achieve the right balance of quality, fragrance performance, safety, stability, cost, and scalability, while complying with relevant quality, safety, and regulatory requirements, including IFRA where applicable.

Source and develop materials, components, packaging, and product solutions that meet product, quality, cost, and performance requirements.

Collaborate closely with Design, Sourcing, Quality Control, Brand, Marketing, and Merchandising teams to align product development priorities and ensure successful launches.

Monitor market, consumer, fragrance, and product trends to identify opportunities for innovation, new product development, and continuous improvement.

Maintain accurate product specifications, testing records, costings, and other relevant product information throughout the development lifecycle.

Qualifications & Experience

Bachelor's degree in Product Development, Chemistry, Cosmetic Science, Chemical Engineering, Business, or a related field.

Minimum 5+ years of product development experience, preferably within fragrance, home fragrance, beauty, personal care, lifestyle, retail, or related consumer-product industries.

Strong working knowledge or practical experience in fragrance development and/or formulation.

Experience working with fragrance houses, laboratories, manufacturers, or specialist suppliers

Good understanding of product testing, manufacturing processes, sourcing, costing, and quality requirements.

Knowledge of IFRA or relevant fragrance/cosmetic regulatory requirements

Strong project management, analytical, communication, and stakeholder-management skills.

Ability to manage multiple products and deadlines in a fast-paced environment.

Willingness to travel locally and internationally as required.

Success Profile

A commercially minded Product Development Manager with strong fragrance and formulation knowledge who can confidently take products from concept through commercialization.

The ideal candidate combines strong product development discipline with sufficient technical knowledge to work effectively with fragrance houses, perfumers, formulators, laboratories, manufacturers, and suppliers. They understand fragrance performance and formulation considerations, can ask the right technical questions, evaluate solutions, identify risks, and make informed product development decisions.

The individual does not necessarily need to be a perfumer or formulation chemist but should have the technical knowledge and practical experience to effectively manage fragrance and formulation development with specialist partners.

Success in this role means delivering products that are consumer-relevant, innovative, high-quality, technically robust, safe and compliant, commercially viable, scalable, and successfully launched on time and within budget.