--- title: Associate Director - Sustainability canonical: https://csrjobs.club/jobs/pepsico-associate-director-sustainability-r27n locale: en description: PepsiCo is hiring a Associate Director - Sustainability on CSR Jobs. Discover this in-house sustainability role and apply today. updated: 2026-10-06 company: PepsiCo country: India contract: Full time seniority: Senior missions: ESG reporting, Stakeholders engagement, Compliance job_type: Sustainability Manager posted: 2026-10-06 valid_through: 2026-12-06 apply: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/4474051624 source: CSR Jobs --- # Associate Director - Sustainability In this role you will steer PepsiCo India's sustainability agenda from the centre, organising cross-functional governance, tracking progress against the pep+ commitments, and turning the global roadmap into action on the ground across climate, agriculture, packaging, water and people. Expect to spend your time in steering meetings, data reviews and executive briefings, keeping every pillar moving in step. What makes this consequential is the scale: PepsiCo India touches farming communities, water-stressed watersheds, plastic packaging and a sprawling supply chain. You are not writing a sustainability report at arm's length: you are shaping how a food-and-beverage giant actually operates within planetary boundaries. This suits someone who has spent a decade or more embedding sustainability inside a large business, is comfortable influencing senior leaders without direct authority, and reads both the data and the politics of change. ## Job FAQs ### What are the main missions and responsibilities of this role? The core of this role is governance and orchestration rather than hands-on project delivery. You would be expected to run the cadence of cross-functional sustainability task forces, consolidate progress against the pep+ pillars, and make sure the India agenda stays legible to both regional and global leadership. A significant share of the job is translating ambition into **trackable KPIs** and surfacing risks before they become surprises. Beyond the rhythm of meetings and reporting, you would co-lead Pep+ Big Bet projects and take ownership of executive-ready deliverables. That means drafting the updates that reach the Executive Committee, ensuring audit readiness for water and plastics, and driving compliance with EPR commitments for the food business. The role is as much about **influence without authority** as it is about technical sustainability knowledge. In the longer term, the mandate looks like embedding sustainability into PepsiCo India's everyday business processes, so that procurement, supply chain and operations treat it as a routine consideration rather than a special project. Success would probably be measured by how firmly the agenda sticks without the sustainability team pushing it. ### Key learning opportunities for this job Few roles offer this kind of exposure to a full sustainability portfolio. You would likely deepen your understanding of **climate, agriculture, water and packaging** commitments simultaneously, rather than specialising in one pillar. Working alongside technical team leads and the global sustainability office, you would pick up the mechanics of how multinational FMCG companies set, cascade and report on ESG targets. The governance dimension is a learning curve in itself. Running task forces, preparing Executive Committee papers, and managing matrixed reporting lines to both the India CAO and the APAC Chief Sustainability Officer would sharpen your ability to operate in complex organisational structures. You could also gain practical grounding in audit processes for water and plastics, as well as India-specific regulatory frameworks such as EPR. On the softer side, the role puts you in rooms with industry associations, government bodies and vendors. That is fertile ground for developing external partnership skills and a read on India's evolving sustainability policy environment. ### How does the ideal candidate look like (experience, skills)? The posting asks for ten to fifteen years in sustainability and CSR, plus a master's in environment, sustainable development or a related field. Realistically, that experience would need to have been gained inside a large corporate or a consultancy serving large corporates, not only in the non-profit or academic world. Familiarity with **food and beverage supply chains** would be a strong advantage, given the emphasis on agriculture, water and packaging. Technically, the ideal candidate is comfortable with sustainability data: GHG accounting, water stewardship metrics, waste and packaging data, and the reporting standards that sit behind them. But the job description is unusually candid about influence and credibility with senior leadership, so evidence of having **shifted business decisions** at a senior level matters more than another certification. Soft skills carry real weight here. The role sits between global teams, regional teams, India leadership and external stakeholders, so clear communication, patience with matrixed reporting and the ability to stay diplomatic under competing priorities are probably non-negotiable. An understanding of the Indian regulatory context for plastics and EPR would round out the profile. ### Advice to stand out and make a successful application Most applicants will likely list sustainability frameworks they know. Far fewer will demonstrate that they have changed how a large business operates. Your application should lead with evidence of **governance and influence**, moments when you convened cross-functional teams, shaped decisions at executive level, or steered a commitment from ambition to measured delivery. Quantify wherever possible. Because this role spans the full pep+ portfolio, avoid presenting yourself as a single-pillar specialist unless you can show how your expertise connects to climate, agriculture, packaging and water. A short section on how you have handled trade-offs, for example between packaging cost and recyclability targets, would signal the judgement the role demands. Connecting your motivation to PepsiCo's scale in India, and to the specific realities of its supply chain, would also show genuine homework. For interviews, prepare for scenario questions about aligning global commitments with India execution, and expect probing on how you handle stakeholders who resist the sustainability agenda. Familiarity with the pep+ framework and the EPR environment for food businesses would be worth revising before you walk in. ### What aspects of the company's sustainability is this role likely to focus on? This role touches the whole of PepsiCo's pep+ agenda in India: climate, agriculture, water, packaging, products and people. The stated emphasis falls particularly on **water stewardship, plastic packaging and EPR compliance**, which reflects the regulatory and reputational pressure on food and beverage companies in India. Agriculture is also significant, given PepsiCo's dependence on crops like potatoes and its sourcing relationships with farming communities. On the reporting side, the role gathers and verifies sustainability data for disclosure, tracks GHG reduction and waste KPIs, and prepares the ground for audits. That means the focus is not only on launching initiatives but on making the numbers behind them credible and audit-ready, a distinction that matters increasingly as ESG reporting scrutiny grows. The governance angle is perhaps the most distinctive. By convening task forces and briefing the Executive Committee, the role is designed to move sustainability from a parallel workstream into the **core business processes** of PepsiCo India. In practice, that is where most of the leverage lies. ### What are the main challenges someone in this role might face? One obvious challenge is operating in a matrix. Reporting to the Chief Corporate Affairs Officer in India while holding a matrix line to the APAC and India Chief Sustainability Officer means balancing multiple centres of gravity. Priorities set globally might not map neatly onto India's realities, and part of the job would be negotiating that gap without slowing delivery. Another challenge is influence without line authority. The role must accelerate work owned by supply chain, sales and operations teams who have their own targets. Persuasion, credibility and executive sponsorship become the real tools. Where sustainability goals create cost or complexity for those teams, resistance is likely, and **managing trade-offs** diplomatically will be constant. Data is a third pressure point. Consolidating and verifying sustainability figures across a sprawling supply chain is painstaking work, and the audits for water, plastics and reporting leave little room for approximation. Add in the external dimension, evolving EPR regulations and shifting geopolitical and macroeconomic trends, and the role demands steady prioritisation. ### How could a typical day look like for someone in this position? A typical day would probably be built around people rather than quiet analysis. There might be a morning governance call with a cross-functional task force, checking progress on packaging or water commitments, followed by time spent reviewing data submissions or refining the numbers behind a KPI. Interspersed would be short working sessions with technical team leads to unblock something specific. Stakeholder engagement is the connective tissue. Some days would involve preparing an executive briefing or a slide deck for the Executive Committee; others might mean meeting an industry association, a vendor or a government body on EPR. There would also be regular contact with global and regional sustainability colleagues to keep India's reporting consistent with the global picture. Variability is likely high. Weeks leading up to audit cycles, executive reviews or major pep+ milestones would be intense and detail-heavy, while quieter periods might allow more time for strategy work and forward planning. Anyone who needs a highly predictable schedule might find the rhythms demanding. ### What are the opportunities for professional growth and development in this role? This role is already a senior position in one of the world's largest food and beverage companies, so the most immediate growth lies in scope rather than title. Successful delivery would put you on record as someone who can run a **country-level sustainability agenda** within a global matrix, a credential that travels well into regional or global sustainability leadership roles. The matrixed reporting lines are also a development asset. Exposure to the APAC Chief Sustainability Officer and to the global sustainability office gives visibility beyond India, which could open doors to broader portfolios across the region. Similarly, the deep engagement with the Executive Committee builds relationships with the people who shape careers at that level. On skills, the mix of governance, data, audit and external partnership means you would leave with a genuinely rounded profile rather than a narrow specialisation. For someone aiming eventually at a Chief Sustainability Officer trajectory, this is a credible building block. ### The main stakeholders you might be interacting with Internally, the most visible relationships would be with the **Chief Corporate Affairs Officer and Head of Sustainability** in India, to whom the role reports, and with the **Chief Sustainability Officer for APAC and India** on a matrix basis. These two lines determine priorities and how success is judged. Beyond them, the Executive Committee and other operating leaders are key audiences for briefings and strategic advice. Day to day, the role would work closely with cross-functional teams across supply chain, sales and operations, as well as technical leads responsible for specific pep+ pillars. The global sustainability office and regional teams are also central, since alignment and transparent reporting between India and global commitments is part of the mandate. Expect frequent contact with these groups, often in a convening rather than directive capacity. Externally, stakeholders are varied and consequential: industry associations, government bodies engaged on EPR and regulatory matters, vendors involved in packaging and water, and partners who help strengthen the sustainability ecosystem. Representing PepsiCo in these forums means the role carries an ambassadorial dimension as much as an operational one. --- Source: https://csrjobs.club/jobs/pepsico-associate-director-sustainability-r27n