Senior Brand Manager, Prepared Foods

The Opportunity

Pilgrim's and JBS are among the largest protein companies in the world. In prepared foods, we are almost entirely unbranded. That gap is the opportunity, and this role is how we close it.

We have the manufacturing scale, the retail relationships, and the commitment to build a house of brands across our prepared foods portfolio. What we don't have yet is the answer to what those brands should be, who they're for, and why anyone should choose them over what's already on the shelf. Somebody gets to decide that. We're hiring that person.

This is not a role that inherits a brand and optimizes it. There is no playbook here yet, and that is the point. You'll work with our category teams to figure out where we should play, build the case for the bets worth making, and carry the approved ones from concept through launch and into a real business. You build it, you launch it, you grow it. Nothing gets handed off to somebody else once the hard part is done.

You'll report directly to the Head of Marketing for Branded Products. The person who decides what we fund is the person you work for, and your case is what gets decided on. If your thinking is good, it moves. That is unusually direct exposure for a role at this level, and it's deliberate. We're at a stage where the quality of the argument matters more than the layers it travels through.

What You'll Own

The bets we make

•     Where our prepared foods brands should play, and where they shouldn't. You'll partner with Category Development and our Center of Excellence to shape the questions worth answering, then turn what comes back into a case with a real point of view.

•     The recommendation to advance, hold, or kill every opportunity in the pipeline, with the reasoning on the record. You make the call you believe in and you defend it. Knowing what to walk away from matters as much as knowing what to chase.

•     Brand architecture: whether we extend, create something new, license, or partner. When your recommendation touches a brand we already have, you'll build it with our Senior Director of Brand Marketing, who owns our brands portfolio-wide. New brands that come out of this pipeline join that portfolio, and you'll have been the one who made them exist.

Getting them to market

•     The selling story and sell-in materials that get our sales teams into the room and out with a win.

•     The packaging creative process, from brief to shelf.

•     The launch, driven through our stage gate process with R&D, Culinary, Packaging, and Operations, and out the door with Commerce Marketing and Brand Activation.

The brands themselves

•     Brand strategy, positioning, and guardrails for what's in your scope: who we're for, what we stand for, what good looks like. Agencies do the building. You set the direction, write the brief, and judge what comes back.

•     Brand stewardship for Principe, our Italian meats business, delivered through agency partners. Roughly 15% of the job today, and it flexes with the business.

True Ownership

•     Priorities shift, opportunities emerge, and challenges need owners. You'll step in where needed, take on additional responsibilities, and help move the business forward.

How You'll Work

You'll work through influence rather than authority. That's not a limitation, it's the job. Your ideas travel on the strength of the case behind them, and the people who do well here are the ones who can walk into a room with Category Development, Sales, R&D, and Operations and leave with all of them bought in.

•     Category Management owns the P&L and runs the business. You're their brand and consumer partner. The bar is that they can't imagine running it without you.

•     Category Development and our Center of Excellence bring where-to-play, category and consumer strategy, analytics, and research, and they help build the brand strategy with you. You shape what they work on and turn it into something worth deciding on.

•     Our Senior Director of Brand Marketing owns our brands across the portfolio. When your work touches an existing brand, she's your partner on what it means for that brand. You're not building in a vacuum, and you're not carrying brand consistency alone.

•     Agencies do the building: research, design, creative. You brief them, direct them, and hold the bar on what comes back.

•     PMO, R&D, Culinary, Packaging, Operations, Sales, Commerce Marketing, and Brand Activation are how things actually get made and sold. You'll know all of them well.

Where This Goes

Right now this work is mostly building the pipeline, which is why the role sits with the Head of Marketing alongside the rest of innovation. As these businesses grow from pipeline into going concerns, the role moves into brand marketing alongside our chicken brand lead, running a portfolio you built.

We're telling you that up front because it's the honest shape of the job and because it's the good part. Most people inherit brands. You'd be growing into a portfolio that exists because of decisions you made.

What Success Looks Like in Year One

•     A pipeline with a real point of view on where our prepared foods brands play, sequenced and defensible.

•     Opportunities brought to clear go or no-go recommendations, with an argument strong enough to decide from.

•     Category managers who treat you as a genuine partner in their business, not a service desk.

•     Principe running on a clear strategy and clear guardrails, executed well by agencies, without you sitting in the campaign flow.

•     A working relationship with Category Development and the Center of Excellence that produces better decisions than either group would reach alone.

Who We're Looking For

You'll need

•     Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Business, or a related field.

•     6+ years of progressive brand management or marketing experience in consumer packaged goods, including owning a brand or a business.

•     A track record taking products from concept all the way through in-market execution. Not managing a stage of it. All of it.

•     Brand building beyond line extension and renovation. We want someone who has entered a new category or launched a new brand and can talk about what it actually took.

•     The ability to lead cross-functional teams and agencies without direct authority, in places where the process was still being invented.

•     Working fluency across consumer research, packaging development, commercial execution, and business case and P&L principles. Enough to direct partners and judge their work, not to do it yourself.

•     The ability to turn a consumer insight into a differentiated concept and explain, out loud, why it wins.

•     Communication that holds up in front of executives.

•     Can perform the functions of the job with or without reasonable accommodation.

•     As a salaried position with the company, you may be required to travel at some point to other facilities, to attend Company events, or as a representative of the Company in other situations. Unless otherwise specified in this posting, the amount of travel may vary and the most qualified candidate must be willing and able to travel as business needs dictate.

It helps if you have

•     Formal brand management training at a blue-chip CPG organization (P&G, General Mills, Conagra, or equivalent).

•     Food, protein, frozen, or prepared foods experience.

•     Experience standing up an innovation process, not just running one that already existed.

•     Foodservice or private label exposure.

How We'll Know It's You

•     Self-Direction: You develop a point of view and a path forward without waiting for a process to tell you how.

•     Decision Quality: You make sound calls with incomplete information and stand behind them.

•     Comfort with Ambiguity: You do your best work where roles and processes are still forming.

•     Influence and Collaboration: You get results through people who don't report to you.

•     Consumer Orientation: Your recommendations start with a real human need, not a manufacturing capability.

•     Commercial Acumen: You hold brand ambition and business case discipline at the same time.

About Us:

The applicant who fills this position will be eligible for the following compensation and benefits:

• Benefits: Vision, Medical, and Dental coverage begin after 60 days of employment;
• Paid Time Off: sick leave, vacation, and 6 company observed holidays;
• 401(k): company match begins after the first year of service and follows the company vesting schedule;
• Base salary range of $140,000 - $160,000;
• Incentive Pay: This position is eligible to participate in the Company’s annual bonus plan, the amount of bonus varies and is subject to the standard terms and conditions of the incentive program; and
• Career Development: Our company is dedicated to supporting professional growth by offering continuous learning opportunities and a focus on career growth through various learning and development programs.

For individuals assigned and/or hired to work in states where it is required by law to include a reasonable estimate of the compensation for any given position, compensation ranges are specific to those states and takes into account various factors that are considered in making compensation decisions, including but not limited to a candidate’s relevant experience, qualifications, skills, competencies, and proficiencies for the role.

The posted salary range represents the Company’s good faith estimate of the compensation that the Company reasonably expects to pay for this role at the time of posting. Actual compensation will be determined based on factors including, but not limited to, relevant experience, skills, qualifications, tenure, internal equity, market data, and may vary accordingly.

This position does not have an application deadline. We will continue to recruit until the position has been filled. 

The Company is dedicated to ensuring a safe and secure environment for our team members and visitors. To assist in achieving that goal, we conduct drug, alcohol, and background checks for all new team members post-offer and prior to the start of employment. The Immigration Reform and Control Act requires that verification of employment eligibility be documented for all new employees by the end of the third day of work.

About us: Pilgrim’s is a leading global food company with more than 62,000 team members worldwide. The company processes, prepares, packages, and delivers fresh, frozen, and value-added food products for customers in more than 100 countries. Pilgrim’s operates protein processing plants and prepared foods facilities in 14 states, Puerto Rico, Mexico, the U.K, the Republic of Ireland and continental Europe. Pilgrim’s is headquartered in beautiful Greeley, Colorado, at the JBS USA corporate office where our 1,200 employees enjoy more than 300 days of sunshine a year.

Our mission: To be the best in all that we do, completely focused on our business, ensuring the best products and services to our customers, a relationship of trust with our suppliers, profitability for our shareholders and the opportunity of a better future for all of our team members.

Our core values are: Availability, Determination, Discipline, Humility, Ownership, Simplicity, Sincerity

EOE, including disability/vets

Unsolicited Assistance: JBS and its companies do not accept unsolicited assistance from any recruitment vendors for any of our open jobs. All resumes or candidate profiles submitted by recruitment vendors or headhunters to any employee at JBS and its companies or via the applicant tracking system, in any form without a valid written request and search agreement previously approved by HR, will be solely owned by JBS and its companies. No fees will be paid should the candidate be hired by JBS and its companies because of an unsolicited referral.