Our Roles & Functions

United Biscuits recruits within various functions of the business, and across all of our sites.

If you would like to find out more about a potential career within UB, click on a career area and see if UB is the place for you.

• Sales

  United Biscuits has one of the largest and most successful sales functions within the UK FMCG industry with each individual demonstrating excellent negotiation and influencing skills to deliver more than £1billion turnover a year. In addition to our well-known branded products, we also manage a cutting-edge Retailer Brands operation.

  If you have a drive for customer service and are highly organised, the Account Coordinator could be the ideal starting point for you at United Biscuits. You’ll enjoy co-ordinating all sales activities with the account and category teams as well as providing pro-active and comprehensive administrative support for the account.

  As a Business Account Manager, building long-term mutually beneficial working relationships, both internally and externally, will be one of the keys to success, along with negotiation and influencing ability. You’ll be responsible for part of the profit & loss (P&L) account and will exceed targets by driving annual plans that reflect the customer’s category and brand objectives.

  As a top Sales Controller, you’ll be inspiring and leading a team of hungry sales professionals in delivering business and sales excellence to an impressive range of retailers.

  Category experts will enjoy the challenges of our leading edge Category Development team and be expected to apply and implement United Biscuits’ category management approach, influencing range & distribution, space & merchandising and promotional strategy. Customer Planning Managers will demonstrate first class numerical and data interpretation capability in order to grow categories by influencing retail buyers.

  The Market, Strategy & Planning (MS&P) team is succeeding in giving commercial leadership to the marketing and sales teams to further enhance United Biscuits’ competitive edge in the market. These roles will suit experienced top-end account managers or controllers that are looking to broaden their skill set across the commercial arena.

  If you are interested in a career with UB, use the job search function to apply for current vacancies, or register your details with us to be considered for future opportunities.

• Manufacturing

  United Biscuits has eleven manufacturing sites around the UK, which provide rewarding careers and exciting challenges in manufacturing. We are passionate about food production and are always seeking ideas for improvements from our manufacturing community, which boasts some of the best development programs in the FMCG industry.

  To be successful in the manufacturing environment you need to be a great team player and a confident communicator, as you’ll rarely be working alone. Health & Safety will be at the front of your mind at all times and you’ll be motivated and inspired to action by our philosophy of continuous improvement. You will be adaptable and confident when diagnosing and solving problems and you will enjoy rolling your sleeves up and getting involved in a fast paced environment.

  As one of our manufacturing team members the start of your career could see you supporting a production line, ensuring volumes are produced within agreed timescales, to the right quality standards with the minimum amount of waste. You’ll need to understand Health & Safety concepts as well as complex written instructions and procedures.

  If you move into a line management role you will be given lots of responsibility very early on, which will involve getting involved in a wide array of different activities, including managing a team, training staff and the identification and delivery of investment opportunities. The core of this role will see you develop leadership skills to enable you to maximise and release the potential of all your team members.

  As your career progresses further, there will be many opportunities to develop your skills and capabilities, which help shape your growth within our business.

  If you are interested in a career with UB, use the job search function to apply for current vacancies, or register your details with us to be considered for future opportunities.

• Human Resources

  Our UK HR function provides a variety of career opportunities for HR professionals within our Business Partner Team, HR Service Centre and our Centre of Expertise teams.

  HR Service Centre Roles

  The HR Service Centre handles our employee transactional activity and our HR Service Agents are the first point of contact for employees requiring HR support. These key members of the HR team provide guidance to employees and managers, referring activities and issues to the wider HR team as required. The ability to complete a range of HR administrative activities, including producing and distributing employee letters and updating our HR systems is crucial, as well as contributing to the continuous improvement of the HRSC and our service provision.

  Our HR Process Agents provide HR administrative support for the UB UK business, ensuring the accurate processing and maintenance of employee records, HR procedures and systems. Management Information Agents are the third team within our Service Centre and they produce key HR reports and information to inform decision-making and ensure we are meeting our legal obligations. For these roles HR systems and excel skills are a re-requisite.

  HR Business Partner Team

  Within our UK HR Business Partner Team, HR Advisors provide line managers with day-to-day support and advice, helping execute Learning and Development plans, managing first-level employee relations issues and supporting the HRBP to manage any change and transition processes effectively.

  At each UK location, our HR Business Partners provide vision and leadership to the business. They implement our HR strategy and provide input and guidance on HR-related needs, influencing the senior stakeholders within their site/s or functions. Our HR Business Partners fully understand the key business objectives, drivers and performance issues through working with the business and how HR can support the delivery of this.

  Centre of Expertise HR Teams

  Our Centre of Expertise Teams includes HR Specialists in the following fields, Recruitment, Reward, Learning and Development and Occupational Health. These experts ensure that our HR strategy is leading edge and support our Business Partner teams in the delivery of the business strategy.

  If you are interested in a career with UB, use the job search function to apply for current vacancies, or register your details with us to be considered for future opportunities.

• Marketing

  The Marketing function at United Biscuits is amongst the busiest and most successful in the FMCG industry, constantly driving profitable brand growth and innovation in the highly competitive snacking environment. It is certainly an exciting time to be servicing the UK consumer and influencing their buying behaviour, particularly in an unpredictable economic climate.

  If you have a strong customer-service ethic, are highly organised and proactive, and comfortable working with data then the Marketing Coordinator role could be the ideal point at which to start your career at United Biscuits. You’ll already have the drive to succeed along with a passion for marketing, as well as the confidence to interact cross-functionally at all levels and add value to a team of brand managers.

  As an Assistant Brand Manager or Brand Manager, you’ll be taking on more strategic and commercial responsibility as well as delivering significant projects to tight deadlines. You’ll need to know the UK consumer like you would an old friend and also display an advanced understanding of data analysis, as well as demonstrating best marketing practice.

  As a Marketing Manager and above, you’ll be leading, guiding and inspiring a team of hungry marketers and focussing on keeping our brands at the forefront of the consumer’s mind. With regular access to senior management, you’ll be encouraged to influence key stakeholders and drive the brand vision across a varied portfolio.

  If you’ve come from a research background, a role in our Research & Insights team could be the role for you to excel in, as you’ll be particularly driven by providing actionable recommendations that will help take our brands’ performance to the next level from excellent research methodology.

  Our bright ideas have to come from somewhere – the Innovation Team, who are responsible for scoping and researching new ideas and trends and selling them in to the leadership team, ensure we stay at the forefront of the consumer’s mind.

  If you are interested in a career with UB, use the job search function to apply for current vacancies, or register your details with us to be considered for future opportunities.

• Procurement

  United Biscuits operates a centralised Procurement buying function, based across three regions; UK, Northern Europe and India. Procurement is a key element in the UB approach to business and the function truly adds value, with a mandate to control every purchase from paperclips upwards.

  Within the function there are three core areas of expertise; Category Buying, Research and Insights and Sourcing Development. Regardless of which team or geography our people are operating in, they are bound by a desire to continually develop our processes and approach to the markets operated in to ensure we deliver value for the UB operations and business units. Our Buyers follow a category management approach, which ensures a deep understanding of the materials purchased and good relationships across UB and the industries we operate in.

  Our Research and Insights team support the buying decisions and they provide both financial analysis and supply market information to ensure our buyers capitalise on global insights to better manage their portfolios.

  Finally, the Sourcing Development team are charged with ensuring the function remains at the leading edge of procurement thinking. Within this team are The eSourcing team, the home of vast eSourcing expertise. The Value Chain team which champions the development of key supplier relationships and Procurement Support which manage the procurement support for marketing in the New Product Development process, cost, data and contract management.

  Given the global scope of our spend the team are culturally diverse. We have native speakers of six different languages and thirty percent of the team speak two or more languages. We have a functional development programme specific to the requirements of a modern day buying organisation and all our buyers are required to attain Membership of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply - the industry standard for Procurement excellence.

  If you are interested in a career with UB, use the job search function to apply for current vacancies, or register your details with us to be considered for future opportunities.

• Engineering

  UB has eleven manufacturing sites in the UK that provide rewarding careers and opportunities for members of our engineering teams. We are passionate about our manufacturing capability and are constantly seeking ideas for improvements and better ways of operating from our Engineering community.

  Entry-level engineers join our business through our apprenticeship route. The start of your career could see you supporting a project, ensuring machinery is operating at the right capacity and with minimum waste. As your career takes shape you’ll be given more responsibility and may supervise additional engineering activities and provide solutions as and when required. With further training and development you’ll become multi-skilled and will develop skills to enable you improve efficiency, quality and operation of our lines.

  We also recruit experienced multi-skilled engineers for our maintenance teams and Technical Co-ordinator roles. These roles involve the repair and maintenance of our manufacturing plants with a key focus on continuous improvement to increase overall performance and efficiency.

  Success in these roles requires you to be a great team player, as you’ll rarely be working alone. You’ll need to be adaptable, proactive, reactive and confident when it comes to solving problems and presenting a realistic solution. You’ll be motivated and inspired to action by our philosophy of continuous improvement and finding the best solution to the problem at hand. And of course, you’ll have to liaise with different types of people, from our shop floor operatives to advanced team members and manufacturing managers.

  Project Engineers are also a vital part of our engineering team, providing the expertise needed for new capital projects, designing and installing new production lines and ensuring we continue to invest in leading edge technology.

  If you are interested in a career with UB, use the job search function to apply for current vacancies, or register your details with us to be considered for future opportunities.

• Logistics

  United Biscuits have a Central Distribution Centre in the Midlands, which supports all our factories and distribute to over 3,500 destinations in the UK, Ireland, Northern Europe and some parts of the world. Our employees are passionate about the roles they play and are always seeking ideas for improvements to enhance the way we work. The mission for the Distribution team is to provide world-class customer service and to minimise our impact on the environment.

  Logistics is made up of various teams, from Customer Care to Supply Planning, and Transport to Warehouse. Our employees are responsible for proactively driving customer relationships and supply chain development, as well as aligning supply planning, account management, distribution schedules and customer expectations.

  We have an outstanding Distribution team and in July of 2010, United Biscuits Logistics were nominated for six awards at the prestigious Motor Transport Awards. UB won three major awards for Environment, Low Carbon and Own Account Operator of the Year.

  If you are interested in a career with UB, use the job search function to apply for current vacancies, or register your details with us to be considered for future opportunities.

• Finance

  United Biscuits have a Corporate Finance function based at Group HQ in Hayes, Site Accountants at our various locations across the UK and also an outsourced Finance team. UB prides itself on internal development and success in this function can lead to excellent longer-term progression.

  As a finance professional, you will have the ability to demonstrate up-to-date technical knowledge and exhibit your commercial awareness, be comfortable in a fast moving and constantly evolving arena and have a natural gravitas with the necessary attitude to liaise confidently and articulately with all levels of people in the business. You will also have the ability to interpret and communicate financial information with non-finance colleagues, to enable our business to work together as a team.

  As a senior member of the finance function you will be providing strategic decision capability to the Senior Leadership Team by, for example, delivering a project assignment that enables optimised brand, customer investment and return through the creation of robust evaluation tools. You may also be managing and motivating a team in delivering both cost effective and significantly profitable objectives. A key financial objective is to create and protect the value of our business.

  If you are interested in a career with UB, use the job search function to apply for current vacancies, or register your details with us to be considered for future opportunities.

• Food Technical

  Food Technical is a very diverse function and United Biscuits have various dedicated teams within Food Technical, from New Product Development to Quality Assurance. Our employees are passionate about food and production and are always looking at how we can make our products more wholesome and nutritional for our consumers.

  Our Quality Assurance Technologists implement continual improvement of site Food Safety, Quality and Environmental standards. They also manage the lab processes and site microbiological testing schedule and results. All of our QA Technologists play an integral role in all site audits and visits, in the UK and Northern Europe.

  Our Quality Assurance teams manage the food safety, product quality, pest control and the process integrity of the site in accordance with our central policies and procedures on continuous improvement of the standards and systems. They are also responsible for the maintenance of product quality assurance and site food safety systems to any compliant standards determined by Central QA Leads, and manage and develop the Quality Assurance (QA) team. They are critical in providing the site with excellent QA team services including; inbound material management, quality systems management, food safety systems, pest control and internal audit management.

  To be successful in the Technical function you need to have working knowledge of HACCP systems and the British Retail Consortium (BRC). Knowledge in advanced food hygiene would be beneficial and also housekeeping systems. You should possess thorough understanding of planning, implementing and reviewing hygiene programs and an understanding of the Food Safety Act. You’ll need to have a strong understanding of Health & Safety concepts, as well as complex written instructions and procedures.

  If you are interested in a career with UB, use the job search function to apply for current vacancies, or register your details with us to be considered for future opportunities.