Senior Design Excellence Manager (Lysol)

We are Reckitt

Home to the world's best loved and trusted hygiene, health, and nutrition brands. Our purpose defines why we exist: to protect, heal and nurture in the relentless pursuit of a cleaner, healthier world. We are a global team united by this purpose. Join us in our fight to make access to the highest quality hygiene, wellness, and nourishment a right and not a privilege.

​Marketing Excellence​

Marketing is at the heart of Reckitt. We pride ourselves on our unique way of driving growth for some of the world's most loved and trusted health, hygiene and nutrition brands. Our purpose and fight are what motivates us to design and deliver distinctive communications throughout our consumer funnel, so that we deliver category growth as well as a positive impact on society. With extensive media and digital teams embedded throughout the organisation, we measure both our business and our societal impact. Our global teams lead on our overarching brand strategy, brand guardianship and innovation pipeline in close partnership with R&D. Leaving our local marketing teams to deliver on our regional goals in partnership with our Sales teams. With the scale of our 2500 marketing community - alongside our leading-edge Marketing Academy - your opportunities to grow and upskill will be extensive.

About the role

The Senior Design Excellence Manager is responsible for balancing hands-on creative and direction with project management and administrative oversight, ensuring the seamless execution of category design projects. This role acts as the link between strategic design direction and execution, working closely with designers to deliver high-quality creative solutions while managing timelines, budgets, and processes.

The Senior Design Excellence Manager ensures design execution aligns with brand governance and innovation strategies, handling less strategic, tactical projects and collaborating cross-functionally to drive executional excellence.

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Your responsibilities

 

Design Execution & Creative Direction
• Lead the hands-on creation and direction of design projects within the category, ensuring brand consistency and executional excellence.
• Work closely with internal designers and external agencies to develop best-in-class packaging, digital, and brand experience design.
• Provide creative leadership, mentoring, and feedback to designers, ensuring design intent is upheld.
• Partner with cross-functional teams to ensure consumer insights and category strategies are reflected in design outputs.
• Support material, packaging, and sustainability innovation, ensuring projects align with Reckitt’s ESG commitments.

 

Project Management & Operational Excellence
• Own the day-to-day management of category design projects, ensuring smooth delivery across multipleworkstreams.
• Oversee project timelines, workflows, and resource planning, ensuring efficient execution and on-time delivery.
• Work closely with the Head of Design Excellence Operations to ensure processes, tools, and technology enable design efficiency.
• Manage budgets for tactical design projects, ensuring cost-effective solutions without compromising creative quality.
• Act as the primary contact for briefing and managing external agencies, ensuring projects remain aligned with Reckitt’s brand and category vision.

 

Brand Governance & Collaboration
• Ensure all design work adheres to category-wide brand principles, visual identity systems, and activation guardrails.
• Work with the Head of Design Excellence – Category to ensure foundational brand work is implemented consistently across multiple channels and touchpoints.
• Partner with Marketing, R&D, and Commercial teams to align design execution with category strategies.
• Maintain design documentation, guidelines, and assets to ensure seamless collaboration across internal teams.

 

 People Leadership & Development
• Foster a culture of creative excellence.
• Lead internal design critiques and creative reviews, ensuring high standards across all category projects.
• Support talent development by identifying skill gaps and recommending training or upskilling opportunities.
• Drive knowledge sharing across teams, contributing to a strong, collaborative design community.

The experience we're looking for

 

Experience & Qualifications
• Experience in brand experience design, packaging design, or creative project management within a large corporate setting or leading design agency.
• Proven track record in design execution and project management, ensuring seamless delivery of multiple concurrent projects.
• Strong understanding of brand governance, design systems, and activation across digital and physical touchpoints.
• Experience in providing creative direction, and managing external agency relationships.
• Knowledge of design workflows, budget management, and process optimisation.

Skills
• Creative Leadership: Strong ability to guide designers while maintaining high creative standards.
• Project & Workflow Management: Ability to balance multiple projects, timelines, and budgets efficiently.
• Brand Stewardship: Ensures category-wide brand frameworks are upheld in execution.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Works closely with Marketing, R&D, and Operations to bring designs to market.
• Problem-Solving & Agility: Thrives in a fast-paced environment, adjusting to shifting priorities. 

 

Mindset & Leadership Approach
• Detail-Oriented & Execution-Driven: Passion for delivering high-quality design work while managing complexity.
• Practical & Hands-On: Comfortable engaging in both creative direction and project management.
• Consumer-Focused & Business-Savvy: Understands how design impacts the overall category and business goals.
• Team-Oriented & Collaborative: Thrives in a highly connected team environment, supporting both strategy and execution.

The skills for success

Brand Strategy, Presentation skills, Drive Innovation, Storytelling, New Product Development, Creativity, Digital Marketing, Commercial accumen, Collaboration, FMCG/Consumer Health Experience, Brand Management, Category Strategy.

What we offer

With inclusion at the heart of everything we do, working alongside our four global Employee Resource Groups, we support our people at every step of their career journey, helping them to succeed in their own individual way. We invest in the wellbeing of our people through parental benefits, an Employee Assistance Program to promote mental health, and life insurance for all employees globally. We have a range of other benefits in line with the local market. Through our global share plans we offer the opportunity to save and share in Reckitt's potential future successes. For eligible roles, we also offer short-term incentives to recognise, appreciate and reward your work for delivering outstanding results. You will be rewarded in line with Reckitt's pay for performance philosophy.

Equality

We recognise that in real life, great people don't always 'tick all the boxes'. That's why we hire for potential as well as experience. Even if you don't meet every point on the job description, if this role and our company feels like a good fit for you, we still want to hear from you. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, disability or medical condition; colour, ethnicity, race, citizenship, and national origin; religion, faith; pregnancy, family status and caring responsibilities; sexual orientation; sex, gender identity, gender expression, and transgender identity; protected veteran status; size or any other basis protected by appropriate law.