Associate Design Manager Jobs in Wisconsin (NOW HIRING)

About Us:

Trilliant Food & Nutrition is a leading manufacturer of premium coffees and powdered beverages, proudly headquartered in Little Chute, Wisconsin. With a legacy rooted in quality, innovation, and service, Trilliant delivers branded and private label solutions across retail, foodservice, and e-commerce channels.

Horseshoe Beverage Company, based in Neenah, WI, is a leading ready-to-drink beverage manufacturer dedicated to delivering an exceptional beverage experience. By combining industry-leading talent and cutting-edge equipment, we drive innovation and consistently deliver the highest quality products to our customers—first and fast.

Our brand portfolio includes Victor Allen’s®, Dutch Bros® beverages and Nurri™, our better-for-you protein beverage line. We are passionate about beverages – and about building a team that’s just as energized. We invite you to explore opportunities at Trilliant or Horseshoe, to see if your talents and career aspirations may fit with our openings.

Position Overview:

Reporting to the Director of Creative, the Design Manager, Licensed Brands is a senior design leader responsible for setting the standard for design excellence, both strategic and operational, across critical brand touchpoints and channels for our partnered licensed brand(s). This role leads the creation, development, execution and governance of compelling design systems and solutions, partnering closely with internal teams, and at times external agencies, to deliver world-class creative quality at scale. This leader inspires teams, influences senior stakeholders, and ensures design consistently elevates our partner brands and the Trilliant brand in ways that advance business objectives.

Responsibilities:

Design Excellence:

• Shape design strategies in alignment with business priorities, growth ambitions and evolving marketing conditions.
• Translate business, consumer and cultural insights into strong design direction and solutions.
• Lead design from ideation through commercialization, leveraging the full breadth of design disciplines.
• Build scalable systems, workflows and guardrails that enable speed, quality and consistency across markets and channels.
• Ensure flawless execution while driving timelines, managing dependencies and addressing risks proactively.

Leadership:

• Influence senior leaders and key stakeholders to build alignment, momentum and decision clarity.
• Manage scopes of work, external partners and internal design operations with strong business discipline.
• Push for stronger, differentiated work that adheres to the brand and creative strategy and elevates the experience of brand – setting and maintaining the creative bar.
• Drive continuous improvement across design operations and commercialization process in partnership with the director of creative.
• Develop strong creative decks to present work confidently to stakeholders, external partners and cross-functionally, articulating the strategic thinking behind creative decisions and how those decisions drive brand goals and creative strategy, as well as how we will measure success.
• Partner with internal data and insights teams to generate performance measurements against creative solutions to continuously drive growth and success of output.

Trend Awareness:

• Proactively continue to learn industry happenings, trends and ways of working.
• Proactively research tools and programs that elevate the work and efficiency for the creative team.
• Keep up-to-date with design and CPG trends to ensure our brand(s) remain fresh and relevant.

Subject Matter Expert:

• Operate with high autonomy and at times, ambiguity.
• Strong and intuitive creative and visual thinking prioritizing scalability and consistency across design outputs.
• Excellent knowledge of standard industry creative programs such as Adobe Creative Suite, Figma.
• Design-thinking knowledge and human-centric methodology driven to ensure people are kept at the heart of driving creative experiences.

Qualifications:

• A Bachelor’s degree or associate's degree in Graphic Design, Graphic Communications, Multimedia Design or User Experience Design is preferred.
• 13+ years of design experience is required; 5-8 years CPG experience preferred; Agency experience highly preferred.
• Demonstrated success leading end-to-end design programs from strategy through execution.
• Demonstrated ability to build trust and influence senior leaders and lead through complexity.
• Proactive and hungry mindset – you go beyond the expected, always looking for ways to push the design output forward.
• Ability to be hands-on with the work without micro-managing.
• Strong business acumen and organizational savvy.
• Passion for mentoring, with the ability to guide brand managers, designers and agency partners to stronger ideas and sharper execution.
• Resilience and agility in a dynamic, fast-paced environment, with the ability to manage multiple priorities and competing deadlines.
• Knowledge in AI tools is a plus.
• Impressive portfolio, demonstrating dynamic and strategic work is required.
• Ability to proactively problem-solve, research and analyze information to inform decisions/recommendations.
• Ability to travel (up to 15%).

Hours, Location and Pay:

We offer a competitive base pay rate and benefits package for full-time employees. This role works standard business hours Monday-Friday at our Little Chute, WI manufacturing facility. Additional hours as needed to support business needs.

Physical and Mental Demands:

• While performing the duties of this job, the employee is frequently required to sit, hear, use hands to type data, use a personal computer and telephone. This employee may occasionally have to operate business machines and lift and/move up to 50 pounds.
• Specific vision abilities required in this job include close vision and the ability to adjust focus. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
• Mental demands include multi-tasking, decision making, problem solving, comparing, copying, computing, compiling, analyzing, coordinating, and synthesizing data.
• Potential for exposure to chemicals, heights, loud noises, mechanical equipment, wet environments, and other potential hazards exists.

Safety Statement:

At Trilliant and Horseshoe, safety is every employee’s first responsibility. We expect all employees to adhere to all safety practices, have the moral courage to stop other individuals from performing unsafe acts, and immediately report unsafe conditions.

Disclosures:

• The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by people assigned to this classification. They are not to be construed as an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties, and skills required of personnel so classified. All personnel may be required to perform duties outside of their normal responsibilities from time to time, as needed.
• Responsible for following food safety/regulatory policies and procedures, executing responsibilities as identified in standard operating procedures, and reporting food safety/regulatory concerns to the Production or Quality Manager.
• Trilliant Food & Nutrition and Horseshoe Beverage Company are Drug Free Workplaces. All applicants are subject to a drug screen and background check as a condition of employment.
• Trilliant Food and Nutrition and Horseshoe Beverage participate in the E-Verify process.
• EEO/AA including Vets and Disabled
• If you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the employment process, please contact us by email at HR@trilliantfood.com and let us know the nature of your request and your contact information.
• Trilliant Food and Nutrition and Horseshoe Beverage are Equal Opportunity Employers.
• The principles of the OECD and UN have been taken into consideration and used as guidance in our human rights practices and procedures.