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Asia Rice Breeding Lead
JOB PURPOSE:
The Asia Rice Product Unit Lead provides visionary leadership to a large, multidisciplinary organization focused on product and trait development, germplasm enhancement, field testing, seed production, and the delivery of innovative rice solutions for Asia. The role is accountable for building and leading a high-performing, cohesive team that advances both short-term commercial objectives and long-term innovation to deliver sustainable business growth and exceptional customer value across the region. The Product Unit is also responsible for the technical leadership of development and deployment of industry-leading rice products by integrating advanced quantitative genetics, germplasm enhancement, molecular breeding, rapid cycling methodologies, biotechnology and conventional trait development, plant pathology, field testing, and seed production, and help drive the use of complex genotypic, phenotypic, and environmental data, advanced analytics, and AI-enabled decision making to accelerate genetic gain, improve product performance, and deliver differentiated solutions for both Transplanted Rice Production (TRP) and Direct Seeded Rice (DSR) systems across Asia. The leader will play a key role in delivering and growing a multi-year, multimillion-Euro product pipeline. Success requires close collaboration with hundreds of stakeholders across Plant Breeding, R&D, Product Supply, Market Development, Commercial, and external partners. The Unit Lead ensures strategic alignment, operational excellence, and scientific leadership across the entire product development lifecycle while fostering a culture of innovation, accountability, and collaboration.
Leadership Impact: The Asia Rice Product Unit Lead plays a critical role in shaping the future of Bayer's rice business in Asia by leading a diverse organization responsible for advancing new genetics, biotechnology innovations, and breeding technologies. Through scientific leadership, strategic vision, and cross-functional influence, this role delivers the products, capabilities, and innovations required to provide industry-leading solutions and enable long-term growth in one of the world's most important and dynamic agricultural markets.
ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Provide strategic vision, architecting and catalyzing team and unit performance to deliver a multi-million Euro Rice seed product design, development, and germplasm enhancement pipeline that supports both short-term commercial objectives and long-term innovation.
- Lead and support senior, multi-disciplinary scientists across Plant Breeding, Product Development, Biotechnology, Quantitative Genetics, Plant Pathology, Data Science, Product Supply, and Commercial functions to advance and launch high-performing rice products and trait solutions. Ensure new products deliver superior yield, agronomic performance, stress tolerance, disease resistance, annual genetic gain, and differentiated customer value across Asia's diverse rice production systems.
- Support unit success through strategic vision and organizational enablement, architecting key plans, capability development, portfolio priorities, and resource allocations to meet evolving commercial, customer, and market needs. Ensure sustained focus on innovation, transformation, and operational excellence to achieve unit, organizational, and company objectives.
- Ensure the unit strategically delivers the rice pipeline while meeting key KPIs related to resource utilization, pipeline advancement, product performance, innovation adoption, and commercialization success. Act as a catalyst for continuous improvement by advancing breeding, testing, analytics, and operational innovations.
- Lead the strategic advancement of the front end of the breeding pipeline through modern breeding approaches including quantitative genetics, rapid cycling, germplasm enhancement, molecular breeding, advanced analytics, AI-enabled decision support, and precision breeding innovations that accelerate genetic gain and long-term competitiveness.
- Design and create systems that identify, prioritize, and implement next-generation breeding, field, digital, data, and operational innovations to accelerate R&D productivity and product development outcomes.
- Provide visionary alignment of breeding targets, product concepts, germplasm strategies, field-testing approaches, trait integration plans, and data-driven product design across all phases of the Rice Product Development pipeline. Drive strategic coherence between breeding, trait development, testing, commercialization, and future innovation priorities.
- Lead the integration and utilization of complex genetic, genomic, phenotypic, environmental, and field-testing datasets to support evidence-based decisions and advance data-driven product development strategies.
- Facilitate and lead collaboration efforts across Product Units, Product Supply, Market Development, Commercial, R&D functions, and external partners to identify capability needs, align priorities, and strategically deploy talent and resources necessary to achieve business and pipeline objectives.
- Demonstrate and embrace VACC leadership attributes with the unit and with peers and colleagues across Bayer Crop Science, providing coaching, organizational leadership, and mechanisms that strengthen accountability, engagement, talent growth, and high performance.
- Act as a key innovator and contributor to the Asia Region and Global Breeding organization, shaping technical strategies for rice and related crop systems, while representing the Unit in cross-functional strategic initiatives, innovation programs, and enterprise-wide transformation efforts.
- Provide leadership to ensure product teams and development units deliver against product development pipelines and achieve key performance indicators related to resource utilization, pipeline progression, pre-commercial product performance, and successful product launch outcomes.
- Foster strong partnerships across Plant Breeding, R&D, Product Supply, Market Development, and Commercial functions to ensure effective advancement of new seed, biotechnology, and conventional trait solutions that address current and future customer needs.
- Ensure a strong culture of Health, Safety & Environment (HS&E), Compliance, Business Conduct, Human Rights, and stewardship across the Unit and all operations in the region.
- Collaborate strategically with peers across Bayer Crop Science to develop and advance technical strategies for rice, accelerate capability development, and share innovations that improve breeding effectiveness and business performance across crops and regions.
WHO YOU ARE:
- PhD degree in Plant or Animal Breeding, Quantitative or Statistical Genetics, Data Science or related fields with 8+ years of technology leadership, or MS degree with 10+ years of technology
- 10+ years leading technical and/or product development teams with demonstrated expertise designing and enabling technical, innovation and people development outcomes
- Strong knowledge of advanced breeding technologies, advanced analytics and information technologies, genomics and/or quantitative genetics with a proven track record of driving innovation to create customer value
- Strong ability in collaborating and building cross-organizational partnerships to create solutions for business and technical problems
- Demonstrate and embrace VACC leadership attributes
Ever feel burnt out by bureaucracy? Us too. That's why we're changing the way we work- for higher productivity, faster innovation, and better results. We call it Dynamic Shared Ownership (DSO). Learn more about what DSO will mean for you in your new role here
https://www.bayer.com/enfstrategyfstrategy
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Location:
India : Telangana : Hyderabad
