Technical Support and Sales Manager Paper & Board

As Technical Support Manager for Paper & Board, you enable technical sales and post‑sales support by leveraging product knowledge to solve customer problems. You will act as a technical ambassador, collaborating with Sales, Marketing and R&D to align innovations with customer needs. You lead trials, benchmarking, and the transfer of lab developments to industrial use, shaping the offering and pricing strategy. This role sits at the intersection of technical excellence and customer relationship building, within a sustainability‑minded company.

• Support technical sales throughout the opportunity lifecycle, addressing objections and optimizing value propositions
• Collaborate with Sales to develop customer opportunities and guide projects from conception to final application
• Lead technical development projects with R&D for organic growth and new solutions
• Manage trials at customer sites and at Imerys plants, including transfer to production
• Conduct benchmarking against competitors and alternatives to inform product positioning and pricing
• Address significant customer quality issues and coordinate solutions with operations/quality teams
• Train sales/marketing teams on technical topics and represent the company at external events and standardization bodies
• Identify unmet technical needs and translate them into product specifications
• Act as external ambassador for technical areas and maintain a network in the customers’ technical community
• Support sustainability initiatives by promoting responsible development and decarbonization efforts

• Bachelor degree in scientific discipline
• 5+ years of experience in Paper & Board (10+ years is a plus)
• Strong customer orientation and ability to build relationships across stakeholders
• Ability to decode customer needs and design tailored solutions
• Experience with project management and cross-functional collaboration (Marketing, Sales, R&D, Operations)
• Good communication skills with customers and technical committees
• Strong organizational skills, self-starter, proactive and autonomous
• Comfort with IT tools (Excel, Word, Gsuite, Web tools); Salesforce is an advantage
• Proficient English; German is a strong asset
• Willingness to travel up to 50% and hold a driving licence
• Experience with benchmarking, trials, and new product development would be beneficial

• customer orientation
• communication
• team player
• Paper & Board industry knowledge
• translating customer needs into specs
• trial management and technology transfer