Product Trialing Manager

Role purpose

Lead the planning, execution and delivery of vegetable-seed trials (includes PLC 6.1, agronomy trials, satellite demos, demo day fields) across India to generate robust, high-quality data that supports product advancement, positioning and successful commercial launch. The role connects breeding, product specialists, agronomy and commercial teams, ensuring trials reflect diverse Indian growing environments and customer needs.

Key responsibilities

• Develop and execute annual trialing plans for assigned vegetable crops, including varietal evaluation, product placement and agronomic practices
• Identify and manage trial locations across key agro-climatic zones, ensuring representative testing for season, disease pressure, soil type and grower practice.
• Lead trial protocol development execution, plot design, data standards and timely execution through internal teams, external partners and contract growers.
• Ensure accurate collection, validation and analysis of trial data covering yield, quality, maturity, disease tolerance, plant habit, shelf life and marketable traits as per the product profile. Effective use of the internal tools like Ez Capture
• Translate trial results into clear recommendations on advancement, positioning, target geographies and product claims.
• Work closely with Product specialist, Breeding TPP teams to support pipeline decisions and hybrid advancement with trial execution, PAT execution, data collection and data consolidation for proposal to the product meetings
• Partner with commercial, Product specialist, customer experience teams to establish satellite demo demo days field demonstrations and build compelling evidence for launches and demand generation activities around CPIs with CX and Commercial team
• Manage trialing budgets, seasonal resource plans, vendors and compliance requirements.
• Lead, coach and develop the trialing team, setting clear objectives, managing performance, building technical and operational capability, and ensuring effective deployment of people and resources across trial locations and seasons.
• Ensure adherence to company stewardship, safety, quality, phytosanitary and data-integrity standards.
• Support to the commercial team for the mass scale customer complaints validation and RCA process Qualifications

Qualifications and experience

• Master s degree in Agriculture, Horticulture, Plant Breeding, Agronomy or a related discipline
• Around 15 years of relevant experience in vegetable-seed trialing, product development, agronomy or field trial management
• Demonstrated experience managing multi-location trials in India, preferably across multiple vegetable crops and seasons.
• Strong understanding of vegetable production systems, crop agronomy, hybrid evaluation and market requirements.
• Experience in experimental design, statistical analysis and digital trial-data systems.
• Proven ability to lead field teams and external partners across geographically dispersed locations.
• Fluency in English; working proficiency in Hindi and/or regional languages is preferred.
• Willingness to travel extensively within India during key trialing periods.

Key competencies

• Strong scientific and agronomic judgement
• Rigorous data quality and attention to detail
• Planning and execution discipline
• Stakeholder management and cross-functional collaboration
• Commercial awareness and customer orientation
• People leadership and capability building
• Clear, evidence-based communication

Success measures

• Timely completion and quality of planned trials
• Reliable, decision-ready data for pipeline and launch decisions
• Effective product recommendations by crop and region
• Trial budget and resource efficiency
• Strong adoption of trialing standards, stewardship and data governance
• Successful support for priority product launches in India