Head of Wastewater Category

The Head of Category is a pivotal, high-impact leader responsible for the end-to-end success of the assigned category. This role drives a market-leading strategy and execution roadmap to maximize innovation, growth, and profitability across global and local markets.

Leading with a full business perspective, you will own the category's financial performance, ensuring the portfolio is competitive, customer-centric, and aligned with corporate growth objectives. This requires both deep strategic vision, a profound technical understanding in the segment and expert-level project management to ensure operational excellence and commercial success throughout the entire product lifecycle.

Success in this role requires a unique blend of strong business acumen, deep financial ownership, in-depth technical understanding and proven cross-functional leadership to deliver measurable results that significantly contribute to the Division's growth targets.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Vision & Category Ownership

• Develop and Own the Category Strategy: Create and maintain the overall category strategy, roadmap, and long-term vision, ensuring alignment with corporate growth targets and future market trends.
• Business Case and Financial Modeling: Define and own the business case for all major initiatives, including financial modeling, ROI assessment, and resource justification to secure critical investment.
• Drive Commercial Success: Achieve sales and margin targets in collaboration with commercial leaders. Define and execute proactive commercial action plans to achieve or outperform defined growth plans.
• Portfolio Management: Maintain a lean, competitive, and customer-relevant portfolio, overseeing the execution of the product lifecycle process, from rigorous development to timely launch.
• Stakeholder Advocacy: Lead advocacy and secure buy-in for the category strategy among key stakeholders, senior leaders, and executive sponsors.

Execution & Cross-Functional Program Management

• Lead Complex Programs: Translate high-level business strategy into detailed, actionable project plans, roadmaps, and work packages across R&D, commercial, technology, and manufacturing functions.
• Manage Cross-Functional Teams: Lead, motivate, and coordinate large, geographically dispersed cross-functional teams (including Product Management, Sales, R&D, Finance, and Operations).
• Risk Mitigation: Proactively identify and manage critical risks, dependencies, and potential bottlenecks, implementing timely and effective mitigation strategies to ensure on-time, on-budget, and on-scope delivery.
• Executive Communication: Prepare and deliver high-quality, executive-level reports and presentations to senior leadership, facilitating critical decision-making and conflict resolution.

Market & Performance Intelligence

• Market Analysis: Conduct continuous, in-depth market analysis, competitive benchmarking, and Voice of Customer (VOC) exercises to inform and validate the strategic direction.
• Performance Tracking: Monitor global product sales, margins, and market share. Identify trends, gaps, and required actions to drive performance and profitability.
• Pricing Strategy: Define and manage global pricing strategies, utilizing a Good-Better-Best approach to maximize market penetration and margin.
• Go-To-Market Excellence: Deliver successful global launches by ensuring complete cross-functional business readiness (Sales enablement, Manufacturing, Engineering, etc.).

Qualifications

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Business Administration, or a related technical field is required.
• A Master's degree or MBA is a distinct advantage.

Experience

• Minimum 7 years of progressive experience managing large-scale, complex, strategic business transformation or growth projects within international, multi-site environments.
• Proven track record of successfully leading complex, cross-functional strategic initiatives that delivered measurable commercial results (e.g., revenue growth, market share gain, or significant cost reduction).
• Extensive experience in a technical field, product segment, or product family.
• Demonstrated experience in business case development, financial modeling, and managing significant project budgets.
• Experience in the house drainage , wastewater industry is a significant advantage.

Skills & Competencies

• Strategic Mindset: Ability to think critically about the business, connect financial performance to strategic choices, and influence senior leaders.
• Drives Results: Consistently achieves ambitious results, maintains focus under pressure, and manages complexity effectively.
• Core Technical Knowledge: A strong foundational understanding of the relevant technologies, tools and frameworks within the wastewater area. Ability to apply theoretical concepts to practical applications and confidence in leading technical discussions.
• Plans and Aligns: Expertly plans, prioritizes, and aligns large-scale work packages to meet organizational goals.
• Collaborates and Communicates: Builds strong cross-functional partnerships, instills trust, and develops multi-mode communications that resonate clearly with diverse audiences, including the executive level.
• Business Insight & Customer Focus: Applies deep knowledge of the market and customer needs to advance organizational goals and build customer-centric solutions.

Join us to be part of a forward-thinking, people-centered company where your ideas and contributions truly matter.