Research and Development Manager

The Place Nigeria is a trademark of Smackers Limited, a company registered in 2003 to explore opportunities in the hospitality sector in Nigeria. The Place is a profitable player in the QSR industry in Nigeria with great prospects and staff strength of +1300 employees. Currently, our operations span across 12 locations in Lagos, Nigeria, with rapid expansion plans to penetrate more locations in short and medium term. Our current management team consists of experienced hands with over 50 years of experience that spans industry as well as management consulting in foremost multinational professional services companies. We are constantly on the lookout for great talents who will work with us in leading the articulation and execution of strategic transformation initiatives as we position ourselves to maintain sustained growth, profitability and our position as a market leader in our industry.
We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Research and Development Manager
Location: Lekki Phase I, Lagos
Job Description

• We are a fast-expanding, multi-billion Naira restaurant, nightclub and hotel, currently with presence in 12 locations. We require the services of an innovative research and development manager to augment our aggressive growth plan.

The candidate will be responsible for the following:

• Oversee ongoing development and roll out of new products and services, and improvement of existing products and services, related processes, tools and structures
• Lead ongoing market research with the objective of connecting with target customers at competitors locations to determine their needs/ preferences and their assessment of our strengths and weaknesses compared with competitors
• Generally study our target customers, gather insights on what they watch and buy, to determine their needs: both actual and those that they have not articulated
• Conduct competitor intelligence gathering and general ongoing competitor analysis.
• Conduct review of industry trends, locally and internationally
• Conduct strategic headhunt or recruitment; assemble and lead team(s)/ expert(s) that will actualize development of new products and improvements to existing products
• Determine and suggest most effective and efficient advertising/ marketing approach for product roll out
• Support branch roll out. Analyse demand across our target locations and prioritize ideal locations to situate branches

Qualifications
The ideal candidate should have:

• A university degree
• Minimum of six years of corporate research and development experience. Preferably with a leading global research agency. Familiarity with food, restaurant, nightlife and hospitality industry will be a plus
• It will also be a plus if the candidate demonstrates ability to be hands-on and be directly involved in experimental production of food and drink products to be developed.