Who are we?
Hi, we’re Tails.com – we turn good days into great years for dogs and their humans.
We're working towards longer lives for millions of healthy, happy dogs by providing tailored nutrition that adapts to each dog’s unique needs. It all starts with a few simple questions about their age, breed, zoomie level and tastebuds. From there, owners can create a personalised meal plan that's delivered to their door every month. No guesswork, no overwhelm. Just exactly the right care for every dog, every day. It's pretty clever stuff.
As a certified B Corp, being a responsible business is built into how we work – upholding high social and environmental standards to create better walkies for generations to come.
Now, we’re cooking up big plans. Having created an entirely new category in dog food, we have the backing of Purina – one of the world’s largest pet food companies. You’ll join a bunch of smart people working towards these same goals (and a bunch of very smart office dogs, all working on their own thing).
Job Title
Innovation Manager (12 month FTC)
Reporting of the role
Reports to: Head of Innovation & Range
Overview of the job
The food we create is one of the most important ways we bring our purpose to life.
As Innovation Manager (Kibble Category), you’ll lead innovation and renovation across our tailored dry food range. Sometimes that means improving recipes our customers already know and trust. Sometimes it means developing something entirely new. Either way, you’ll take ideas from first brief through to launch, then use what we’ve learned to make the next one even better.
Working alongside the Head of Innovation & Range, you’ll partner closely with Nutrition, Brand, Operations and our manufacturing partners to deliver products that improve dogs’ lives while strengthening one of the most distinctive ranges in pet food.
Every improvement you make, every recipe you help develop and every innovation you bring to life has the potential to turn more good days into great years for dogs and their humans.
3 best things about the job
You’ll shape the heart of the Tails range
You’ll see your ideas become reality
You’ll learn from the best
Working alongside experts in Nutrition, Brand, Operations and Product Development, you’ll help shape the future of personalised pet nutrition while building your own capability as an innovation leader.
Measures of success –
In the first few months, you would have:
Built strong relationships with colleagues across Innovation & Range, Nutrition, Brand, Operations, Commercial and our supplier partners.
Taken ownership of innovation and renovation projects within the dry food portfolio, confidently leading them through Stage Gate.
Developed a deep understanding of our tailored dry food proposition, the opportunities within the category and the priorities for the year ahead.
Become confident using customer insight, commercial performance and Hypercare learnings to strengthen product development.
Started identifying opportunities to improve both the products we make and the way we bring them to market.
Roles & Responsibilities:
Deliver innovation and renovation across our tailored dry food range
Lead end-to-end innovation and renovation projects across our personalised kibble portfolio. Build robust project plans, coordinate cross-functional teams and guide projects confidently through Stage Gate, launch and Hypercare.
Take ownership of delivery, ensuring projects remain on track while balancing customer benefit, technical feasibility and commercial priorities.
Continuously improve our tailored dry food range
Look for opportunities to make our personalised kibble even better.
Work with Nutrition, Food Technology and supplier partners to improve recipes, ingredients and manufacturing processes, ensuring our range continues to evolve as customer needs, nutritional science and technology advance.
Build strong development briefs
Translate customer insight, behavioural data and commercial opportunities into clear product briefs.
Ensure every project starts with a well-defined problem to solve, a clear customer benefit and measurable success criteria.
Develop products customers (and their dogs!) love
Partner with Brand, Nutrition and Regulatory to create clear, credible product benefits supported by robust claims.
Help customers understand why our tailored approach matters and how each product contributes to their dog’s health and wellbeing.
Learn from every launch
Successful launches are only the beginning - monitor product performance using customer feedback, retention, Voice of Customer, CX insights, quality metrics and Hypercare reviews. Use those learnings to strengthen future projects and continuously improve how we innovate.
Build trusted supplier partnerships
Develop strong relationships with manufacturing and ingredient partners.
Create clear expectations, hold suppliers accountable for delivery and work collaboratively to solve problems quickly when they arise.
What you will need:
Experience delivering innovation or renovation within FMCG, food or another consumer products business.
A genuine curiosity about customers, with the ability to turn insight into products people genuinely value.
Strong commercial judgement, balancing customer benefit with business performance when making decisions.
An appreciation for brands and the role products play in building long-term customer loyalty.
Confident working across disciplines, building trusted relationships with technical experts, commercial teams, brand marketers and external partners.
Able to bring clarity to complex projects, make well-reasoned recommendations and maintain momentum when priorities compete.
Comfortable using evidence to guide decisions, learning from customer feedback and post-launch performance to continually improve products.
Naturally collaborative, with the confidence to challenge constructively and influence without direct authority.
Nice to have:
Experience within pet nutrition.
Experience in a D2C, subscription or e-commerce business.
Experience working with highly personalised products or services.
A few of our core benefits:
Private Healthcare through AXA
A 9 day fortnight - our office is closed every other Friday!
25 days of Annual Leave and 8 additional remote working days
For more information on our benefits, perks and what makes us unique, please visit our website here
What’s next?
If this sounds like it matches your experience and what you’d love to do, we can’t wait to hear from you! If you’re unsure whether you fit our criteria exactly, please get in touch anyway. And because we believe that diverse teams perform better, we’d especially love to hear from you if you’re from an under-represented demographic.
Here’s a taster of how our recruitment process works:
Once you have applied your CV will be reviewed by the Talent Acquisition Team.
If selected, you will then have a call with the TA Team who will tell you more about us and the role, as well as learning more about your skills and experience.
Should you be successful, the next stage will be a video call with the hiring manager.
If successful, you will be invited to present a task back to a panel of interviewers.
The final stage is a more informal conversation with some of your peers.
Our Commitment
We’re proud to be an active equal opportunity employer. We want to give everyone a fair chance to join us in changing the world of pet food for good. We do this by conducting a structured recruitment process for all candidates, as well as actively promoting our roles to communities that are under-represented at Tails.com.
During your interview process you’ll meet some of our team with varying levels of responsibility and experience. We want to give every candidate a fair interview process and if you need any reasonable adjustments made, please let us know.
