Senior Manager, Product Innovation

Athena Club is building the next-generation personal care company, and we’re just getting started. Over the past 12 months, we’ve doubled our business, accelerated our retail momentum, and expanded our reach as more customers turn to Athena for beautifully designed, high-performance essentials.

We’re redefining everyday personal care through innovation, transparency, and design-led thinking, transforming daily routines into rituals. With strengths in world-class product development, compelling storytelling, and a brand built to stand out on shelf and in culture, we’re entering an exciting new phase of category expansion and national growth.

We’re looking for experienced, entrepreneurial leaders who thrive in fast-moving environments, take full ownership, and know how to scale teams, systems, and outcomes. This role is a rare opportunity to help shape Athena Club’s next chapter, driving strategy, execution, and long-term impact as we build an iconic modern personal care brand.

The Role

We are looking for a Senior Manager, Product Innovation to own the front end of our physical product funnel. This is the person who turns whitespace into concepts and concepts into de-risked, buildable briefs. You will lead blue-sky ideation within a 1-2 year innovation pipeline, translate macro and category trends into product opportunities, drive early-stage formula and fragrance direction/development, and build the business and consumer case that moves an idea to an approved brief ready for development.

This is a strategic, upstream role. You will own initial formula execution and submissions to prove out concepts and get them to a transitional place. Your job is to define what we should make and why, prove it is feasible and differentiated, and hand off a concept sharp enough that product and packaging development can commercialize it. You will work at the intersection of consumer insight, technical feasibility, retail strategy, brand and product.

The ideal candidate is equal parts creative and rigorous: someone who can dream up a category-defining product over coffee and then pressure-test it against clean standards, cost targets, retail shelf reality, and regulatory feasibility by the end of the week.

Responsibilities

Innovation Strategy and Blue-Sky Ideation

• Own and continuously evolve the multi-year innovation pipeline across all categories (existing and new), balancing near-in line extensions with true blue-sky innovation.

• Identify and articulate whitespace opportunities grounded in unmet consumer needs, emerging science, and category gaps, including net-new categories and formats the brand does not play in today.

• Develop compelling concept briefs: the target consumer, the insight, the "why now," the hero benefit, the point of difference, etc.

• Maintain and defend a healthy portfolio of ideas at every stage of the funnel and make clear, defensible recommendations on what to advance, park, or archive.

Trend and consumer insight

• Serve as the internal authority on macro, category, ingredient, and format trends across beauty and personal care, using tools and sources such as, but not limited to, leveraging existing vendors, social listening, social media, Nielson, trade shows, and structured retail shelf walks.

• Track the competitive and retail landscape at Target, Walmart, and DTC, benchmarking assortment, positioning, claims, and price/value against key competitors.

• Translate trend signals and consumer insight into prioritized, actionable opportunity areas rather than trend reports for their own sake.

• Design and interpret early-stage consumer inputs (concept screens, surveys, consumer testing) to validate demand and sharpen concepts before development investment.

Early formula development and technical ideation

• Partner with external formulators, labs and contract manufacturers to shape early formula direction: target actives, hero ingredients, sensorial goals, and claims potential.

• Identify, evaluate, and source new key partners; formulators, labs, contract manufacturers, and ingredient/technology suppliers, to expand the brand's development capabilities and unlock concepts existing partners cannot support.

• Build technical feasibility into concepts from the start, screening for clean-standard compliance (e.g., Target Clean), ingredient safety and consumer-perception scoring (EWG, Yuka), cost-of-goods viability, and manufacturability.

• Direct competitive formula benchmarking to define where our product must win (sensory, efficacy, ingredient story, value).

• Own initial formula execution and submissions to prove out concepts, directing early bench work, sample rounds, and directional testing to bring a concept to a stable, transitional state before handoff to the core development team.

• Own the early stages of the innovation stage-gate: define the criteria a concept must clear to advance and hold the bar consistently.

• Build the business case for each priority concept: market size, target consumer, retail fit, pricing/margin analysis, and risk profile.

• Present recommendations and innovation storytelling to leadership and retail partners with a clear, evidence-backed narrative that positions Athena Club as an innovation leader.

Fragrance ideation and scent development

• Lead fragrance strategy for innovation projects: define olfactive direction, map concepts against fragrance families and the fragrance wheel, and identify scent whitespace across the portfolio.

• Write fragrance briefs and partner in the creative process with fragrance houses, including submission rounds, evaluation, and down-selection.

• Balance creative ambition with practical constraints: IFRA standards, allergen and labeling requirements, stability in the base, and cost.

• Build and maintain an internal olfactive library and point of view on the brand's evolving scent signature.

Requirements

• 5+ years in product development, innovation, R&D, or brand/innovation strategy, with meaningful time in beauty or personal care (body care, skin care, hair care, fragrance, or OTC personal care).

• Demonstrated ownership of products from concept through launch, ideally in both DTC and mass/masstige retail environments.

• Working fluency in personal care/beauty formulation: enough ingredient and process literacy to shape feasible concepts, write technical briefs, and partner credibly with formulators and labs.

• Fluency in personal care clean standards and safety/perception frameworks (e.g., Target Clean, EWG, Yuka) and how they shape formulation choices.

• Strong command of consumer and market insight tools and methods, and the ability to turn data into prioritized action.

• Excellent written and verbal communication, able to write a crisp brief and sell a concept to leadership and retail partners.

• Highly organized, self-directed, and comfortable managing many early-stage projects at once.

Nice to Have

• Direct experience developing or briefing fragrance with fragrance houses, and familiarity with olfactive families and the fragrance wheel.

• Experience with OTC drug categories and awareness of FDA development requirements

• Familiarity with international regulatory frameworks (UK/EU cosmetic regulations, REACH) as they affect feasibility and expansion.

• Experience managing external partners: contract manufacturers, labs, and creative/insight vendors.

• Exposure to cost-of-goods modeling and the commercial mechanics of a launch (margin, pricing, retail economics).

• Experience at a high-growth DTC or challenger personal care brand.

The (+) Extras

• Medical, Dental, Vision insurance

• Life + Disability

• HSA or FSA

• Commuter benefits

• 401K

• Weekly team lunches

• Optional Bi-Weekly Team Workouts

• Annual Offsite “Camp Athena Club”

Salary Range

$125,000—$150,000 USD

Equal Opportunity & InclusionAthena Club is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to building an inclusive workplace. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, national origin, citizenship status, disability, veteran status, genetic information, marital status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.

We believe diverse perspectives strengthen our team and our products, and we encourage people from all backgrounds to apply.