What are the responsibilities and job description for the U.S. Category Design Manager position at Haleon?
Welcome to Haleon. We’re a purpose-driven, world-class consumer company putting everyday health in the hands of millions. In just three years since our launch, we’ve grown, evolved and are now entering an exciting new chapter – one filled with bold ambitions and enormous opportunity.
Our trusted portfolio of brands – including Sensodyne®, Panadol®, Advil®, Voltaren®, Theraflu®, Otrivin®, and Centrum® – lead in resilient and growing categories. What sets us apart is our unique blend of deep human understanding and trusted science.
Now it’s time to fully realise the full potential of our business and our people. We do this through our Win as One strategy. It puts our purpose – to deliver better everyday health with humanity – at the heart of everything we do. It unites us, inspires us, and challenges us to be better every day, driven by our agile, performance-focused culture.
Our trusted portfolio of brands – including Sensodyne®, Panadol®, Advil®, Voltaren®, Theraflu®, Otrivin®, and Centrum® – lead in resilient and growing categories. What sets us apart is our unique blend of deep human understanding and trusted science.
Now it’s time to fully realise the full potential of our business and our people. We do this through our Win as One strategy. It puts our purpose – to deliver better everyday health with humanity – at the heart of everything we do. It unites us, inspires us, and challenges us to be better every day, driven by our agile, performance-focused culture.
The Category Design Manager is a senior strategic creative leader responsible for shaping, evolving, and driving the end-to-end visual brand experience across an entire category portfolio. Reporting to the US Director of Design, this role defines the Design vision, creative strategy, and brand expression systems that guide multiple brands and product lines across the US market. The Category Design Manager is responsible for what the brand should look, feel, and mean to consumers, and for creating new brand assets, identity systems, and experience principles that move the business forward.
This role is a creator, innovator, orchestrator, and strategic design partner, influencing senior business leaders across insights, R&D, marketing, digital and Innovation. The Category Design Manager ensures Haleon’s portfolio continues to be recognized for remarkable, emotionally resonant, and human-centered brand experiences that drive both business growth and brand love.
Role Responsibilities
Category Level Creative Leadership (Strategic Visionary)
- Lead the creation and evolution of category wide visual brand strategies, identity systems, and design frameworks.
- Define the creative direction for multiple brands, ensuring each brand’s distinctiveness, meaning, and equity grows over time.
- Partner with the US Director of Design to shape the Design vision and long-term roadmap for the category.
Brand System Creation (Not Just Execution)
- Create and steward new distinctive brand assets, packaging principles, experience guidelines, and visual languages.
- Lead brand redesigns, innovations, and visual transformations to elevate relevance and differentiation.
Experience Design Across the Consumer Journey
- Design and direct end-to-end consumer and Health care professional experiences across omnichannel environments packaging, digital, retail, experiential, and emerging platforms.
- Ensure the brand experience is cohesive, emotionally resonant, and aligned with human-centric principles.
Creative Direction & Cross-Functional Orchestration
- Serve as the creative and design lead for category/product teams, inspiring collaboration and elevating the creative bar internally and with agency partners.
- Partner cross-functionally with insights, data strategy, R&D, marketing, technology, and product leaders to bring breakthrough ideas to life.
- Influence upstream decision making through design thought leadership and consumer driven insight translation.
Innovation & Future Facing Design
- Contribute to the ideation of new value propositions, innovation platforms, and experiential concepts.
- Bring external inspiration into HALEON: Cultural trends, design futures, human behavior, and category insights to fuel breakthrough creative thinking.
Creative Governance & Brand Equity Growth
- Define the creative standards and brand rules that guide execution partners and agencies.
- Ensure that creative direction translates into consistent, intentional brand building across all activations.
Capability Building & Culture Leadership
- Inspire a culture of design thinking, creativity, experimentation, and strategic craftsmanship across the broader organization.
- Mentor and guide designers, agencies, and cross-functional partners to elevate design quality and consumer centricity.
Leadership Expectations
- Lead with Haleon’s commitment to delivering better everyday health with humanity.
- Champion inclusive design that reflects the diverse communities Haleon serves.
- Set a bold, inspiring creative tone driving originality, courage, and high performance.
- Encourage curiosity, external inspiration, and creativity rooted in human insights.
- Foster strong collaboration across boundaries with empathy, clarity, and leadership maturity.
- Focus teams on what matters most to drive business outcomes through worldclass design.
Success Measures
- Brand & Category Growth Outcome: lift in brand equity
- Distinctive brand assets strength and Adoption
- Quality of Creative Direction
- Consumer centric Impact – Improvement in consumer delights
- Innovation & Experience Design Advancement
- Cross Functional Influence & Leadership
- Operation of Creative Standards – Increased agility and quality across all brand touchpoint due to better frameworks. Fewer deviation or inconsistencies in execution
- The position is based in Warren, NJ, and follows a hybrid model, requiring an in-office presence of 3 days per week.
Why you?
Basic Qualifications:
We are looking for professionals with these required skills to achieve our goals:
- 10 years as a Visual Designer, Creative Design Manager, or Design Lead in agency or client-side environments.
- Deep expertise in Branding, Design Systems, and Innovation Design.
- Strong proficiency in design thinking, human-centered design, and applying insights to creative strategy.
- Understanding of global design culture and modern design practices across industries.
- Strategic tactical knowledge of how Design drives brand equity, business value, and portfolio growth.
- Experience in FMCG/healthcare design leadership roles; experience managing category level budgets preferred.
- Cross-disciplinary design experience including brand identity, structural packaging, digital, POS, advertising, and more.
- Proven track record in creating, launching, and scaling distinctive brand assets and complete visual systems.
- Strong design communication skills; ability to articulate creative decisions through consumer and business impact.
- Deep familiarity with Adobe CC; bonus for 3D, CAD, motion, or digital experience.
- Strong portfolio showcasing omnichannel brand system design and breakthrough creative work.
- Ability to influence, inspire, and lead through design with intellectual curiosity and hands on capability when needed
The salary range for this role is: $ 126,603.20 $ 158,254 USD bonus
Benefits
Haleon offers a robust Total Reward package that consists of competitive pay and a comprehensive benefits program. This includes a generous 401(k) plan, tuition reimbursement and time off programs including 6 months paid parental leave. On day one, you are eligible for benefits, including our healthcare programs where the company pays for the majority of your medical coverage for you and your family. We also offer the opportunity to receive a discretionary bonus based on the achievement of key business performance and other incentive/recognition programs as part of the offering.
Job Posting End Date
Equal Opportunities
Haleon are committed to mobilising our purpose in a way that represents the diverse consumers and communities who rely on our brands every day. It guides us in creating an inclusive culture, where different backgrounds and views are valued and respected – all in support of understanding and best serving the needs of our consumers and unleashing the full potential of our people. It’s important to us that Haleon is a place where all our employees feel they truly belong.
During the application process, we may ask you to share some personal information, which is entirely voluntary. This information ensures we meet certain regulatory and reporting obligations and supports the development, refinement, and execution of our inclusion and belonging programmes that are open to all Haleon employees.
The personal information you provide will be kept confidential, used only for legitimate business purposes, and will never be used in making any employment decisions, including hiring decisions.
Please note that if you are a US Licensed Healthcare Professional or Healthcare Professional as defined by the laws of the state issuing your license, Haleon may be required to capture and report expenses Haleon incurs, on your behalf, in the event you are afforded an interview for employment. This capture of applicable transfers of value is necessary to ensure Haleon’s compliance to all federal and state US Transparency requirements.
Accommodation Requests
If you require a reasonable accommodation or other assistance to apply for a job at Haleon at any stage of the application process, please contact us by sending an email to HR.AmericasSC-CS@haleon.com. Please include the following in your email:
Use subject line: ‘Haleon Careers: Job Accommodation Request’
Your Name and contact information
Requisition ID and Job Title you are interested in
Location of Requisition (city/state or province/country)
Description of specific accommodation you are requesting
Please note: Resumes, CVs, or other requests outside of accommodation support submitted to this email box will not be accepted.
Use subject line: ‘Haleon Careers: Job Accommodation Request’
Your Name and contact information
Requisition ID and Job Title you are interested in
Location of Requisition (city/state or province/country)
Description of specific accommodation you are requesting
Please note: Resumes, CVs, or other requests outside of accommodation support submitted to this email box will not be accepted.
Note to candidates
The Haleon recruitment team will contact you using a Haleon email account (@haleon.com). If you are not sure whether the email you received is from Haleon, please get in touch.
