Industry Technology Manager

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Interested in a career that matters?

Interested in a career that matters?

At Novonesis, we believe biological solutions can help transform the way the world produces and enjoys beverages. As an Industry Technical Manager, Beverages, you will play a critical role in driving technical excellence, customer success, and portfolio deployment across the MEA region.

Based in Johannesburg, you will lead the regional Technical Service team and partner closely with commercial leaders, strategic customers, and the global beverages community. This is a highly visible leadership role that combines people management, brewing expertise, customer engagement, facility leadership, and regional collaboration to support growth and innovation across the beverage industry.

The Role & Your Impact

As the regional technical leader for beverages, you will set the direction for Technical Service activities, ensure disciplined project execution, and strengthen customer partnerships through high-quality technical support and brewing expertise. You will balance strategic leadership with hands-on customer engagement and play a key role in translating global innovations into regional business value.

Key responsibilities include:

Lead, coach, and develop the regional Technical Service team, fostering a culture of collaboration, safety, accountability, and continuous improvement.
Own and prioritize the regional brewing technical service portfolio, ensuring effective allocation of resources and delivery of customer projects.
Serve as a senior technical partner for strategic customers and commercial teams, providing expertise in brewing processes, enzymes, cultures, and integrated solutions.
Drive excellence in project execution through well-defined problem statements, trial protocols, data plans, documentation, recommendations, and follow-up actions.
Lead the operation and continued development of the Johannesburg brewing pilot plant and application facilities, ensuring safe and effective customer collaboration.
Support regional deployment of new technologies and portfolio innovations through customer trials, training, and technical-commercial engagement.
Connect regional teams with global application experts to share knowledge, standardize best practices, and scale capabilities.
Use Technical Service systems and performance data to improve transparency, prioritization, forecasting, learning reuse, and customer experience.

What You’ll Need to Be Successful

To succeed in this role, you bring strong technical expertise within brewing together with proven leadership capabilities and a passion for creating customer value.

Required qualifications and experience:

Degree in Brewing Science (Brewmeister), Food Science, Biotechnology, Chemical Engineering, Process Engineering, Microbiology, or a related discipline.
Minimum 8-10 years of industrial brewing and technical service experience.
Demonstrated experience with plant trials, process optimization, troubleshooting, and customer-facing technical support.
Proven people leadership experience or significant team/project leadership responsibility.
Strong ability to connect technical outcomes with customer value and commercial priorities.
Fluent English communication skills, both written and verbal.

Essential competencies:

Leadership and people development
Strategic prioritization and execution discipline
Stakeholder management and customer engagement
Technical problem solving and decision making
Collaboration across regional and global networks
Communication and influence at senior customer levels

Additional Skills & Interests We Value

The following experiences and capabilities would be beneficial but are not required:

Additional African or regional language skills.
Experience working across multiple countries and cultures.
Knowledge of beverage innovation, product development, or fermentation technologies.
Experience launching new technologies or solutions in a commercial environment.
Passion for mentoring technical talent and building high-performing teams.

What We Offer

At Novonesis, you will join a purpose-driven company where science, innovation, and sustainability come together to create better solutions for customers and society.

We offer:

An opportunity to shape the technical direction of the beverages business across the MEA region.
Leadership responsibility for a highly skilled regional team.
Collaboration with global technical and commercial experts.
Exposure to strategic customers and industry-leading brewing technologies.
A culture focused on learning, innovation, inclusion, and personal growth.
Opportunities to expand your leadership and technical capabilities within a global organization.

Ways of Working / Working Conditions

Location: Johannesburg, South Africa.
This role combines office-based leadership, customer-facing activities, and brewing application work.
Regular engagement with the Johannesburg brewing pilot plant and application facilities.
Regional travel is expected to support customer projects, technical trials, and business development activities across the MEA region.
Close collaboration with regional commercial teams and the global beverages community.

Our purpose guides the way

In Novonesis, we know that solutions rooted in biology can help solve humanity’s biggest challenges. Since we began more than a century ago, this has been our guide. It’s how we've gotten so far. And it’s how we'll impact the future. Now, more than ever, the world needs change. And with biosolutions, the possibilities for transformation are endless. If our purpose resonates with you, we encourage you to apply.

Opportunities for everyone

We are committed to an inclusive recruitment process and equal opportunity for all applicants. Therefore we ask you to apply without a cover letter or photo and instead include a few sentences in your CV explaining your motivation for applying.

We make all employment decisions based on business needs and welcome candidates with a wide range of backgrounds, including ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, or veteran status.

Explore other openings

If this position isn’t the right fit, you may still find other opportunities with us. You’re welcome to explore open roles or create a job agent to stay connected with future opportunities at

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