🚀 Upstream Marketing Director, New Products (m/f/x)*

Solventum Düsseldorf, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

Thank you for your interest in joining Solventum. Solventum is a new healthcare company with a long legacy of solving big challenges that improve lives and help healthcare professionals perform at their best. At Solventum, people are at the heart of every innovation we pursue, guided by empathy, insight, and clinical intelligence.

Job Description

3M Health Care is now Solventum. At Solventum, we enable better, smarter, safer healthcare to improve lives. As a new company with a long legacy of creating breakthrough solutions for our customers’ toughest challenges, we pioneer game-changing innovations at the intersection of health, material and data science.

The Impact You’ll Make in this Role

The Upstream Marketing Director, New Products (m/f/x)* is accountable for shaping and executing the franchise “Build” strategy – the long‑term innovation roadmap designed to drive franchise growth and competitive advantage. In this role, you will be responsible for delivering the strategic and commercial success of new product initiatives (NPIs) from Concept to Commercialisation. You will have a direct impact on shaping the future of the business through strong market insight, strategic discipline, and leadership of a high‑performing upstream team.

Responsibilities

You will work closely with Upstream leadership, PMO, R&D, Regulatory, Clinical, Downstream Marketing, and Commercial teams to ensure seamless execution of innovation insights into commercially viable products.

Strategy & Innovation Roadmap

• Define and maintain the franchise innovation roadmap, ensuring alignment between early‑stage exploration (FEI) and late‑stage commercial strategy (Downstream)
• Partner with the Upstream Marketing Director, Front‑end Innovation (FEI) Director to translate identified opportunity spaces into actionable product strategies and project charters
• Partner with Upstream leadership to prioritise investments and ensure portfolio balance between core, adjacent, and breakthrough innovation
• Track and communicate progress of NPIs against the Build strategy, ensuring project outcomes contribute to strategic and financial goals
• Serve as a key member of the Global Upstream leadership team

New Product Portfolio & Project Oversight

• Ensure the marketing team delivers clear market rationale, customer insights, and competitive differentiation for all projects in the Build portfolio
• Ensure unmet needs and opportunity areas translate into target concept profiles, value propositions, and business cases that guide R&D investment decisions and underpin stage‑gate decisions
• Develop strong team partnership with Finance to ensure high‑fidelity in project financial models and assessment of NPV
• Lead scenario planning and risk mitigation strategies across the portfolio of active NPIs
• Accountable for the quality and readiness of marketing deliverables for all stage‑gate reviews
• Partner with PMO to ensure efficient stage‑gate facilitation and project level governance to ensure timely project decisions and escalation

People and Team Leadership

• Lead, mentor, and develop a team of upstream product managers
• Set performance expectations, provide coaching, and foster skill growth in strategic marketing, customer insight generation, and business case development
• Champion continuous improvement of upstream skills, capabilities, processes, and tools
• Create a culture of accountability, innovation, and strategic and financial rigor

Your Skills And Expertise

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in Marketing, Business Management, or a related field and profound progressive experience in marketing, innovation strategy, and/or new product development roles
• Proven ability to define and execute multi‑year growth or innovation strategies
• Experience with stage‑gate processes and tools (e.g., Accolade) and portfolio governance
• Exceptional strategic thinking, analytical ability and financial acumen, with a track record of collaborating cross‑functionally to deliver actionable recommendations
• Strong cross‑functional leadership and stakeholder management skills
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, executive presence, and storytelling ability; with experience presenting to C‑level executives
• Experience leading high‑performing teams and developing future leaders

Additional qualifications that could help you succeed even further in this role

• Advanced degree (e.g., MBA, Economics, or related field)
• Experience in healthcare, medical devices, or other regulated industries
• Knowledge of the advanced wound care market, including negative pressure wound therapies
• Ability to thrive in an action‑oriented and high accountability environment

Work location

Remote

Travel

10-15% domestic and international

Relocation Assistance

Not authorised

Must be legally authorised to work in country of employment without sponsorship for employment visa status.

Supporting Your Well‑being

Solventum offers many programs to help you live your best life – both physically and financially. To ensure competitive pay and benefits, Solventum regularly benchmarks with other companies that are comparable in size and scope.

Diversity & Inclusion

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, civil status, disability, family status, or membership of the travelling community. Solventum is committed to maintaining the highest standards of integrity and professionalism in our recruitment process.

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