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.

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 humancentric 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.

• Expertise in Branding, Design Systems, and Innovation Design.

• Experience with Adobe CC; bonus for 3D, CAD, motion, or digital experience.

• Experience in FMCG/healthcare design leadership roles

• 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.

• 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.

• 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

Preferred Qualifications:

If you have the following characteristics, it would be a plus:

• Experience managing category level budgets

The salary range for this role is $142,078- $ 195,356 USD annually + bonus

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.