Senior Category Manager

Join to apply for the Senior Category Manager role at McCain Foods.

Why Join the McCain Family

• Your Life – we’re here to help you fulfil your potential, flourish, and thrive in work and life.
• Your Success – work alongside passionate individuals who are committed to supporting your career ambitions, drive, and success.
• Your Impact – we want you to make a meaningful, lasting impact for you, for your colleagues, and for the business.

About The Role

In every role, McCainers are ambitious, curious, and interested in helping each other create good work experiences. We think about the customer and make doing business with McCain easy. Reporting to the Category Growth Director, the Senior Category Manager (Team Leader) plays a pivotal role in shaping and delivering the Category Growth Strategy across the frozen potato and snacking portfolio. This is a high‑impact role, partnering closely with Sales to unlock growth opportunities across all channels and customers. You will use deep market, shopper and customer insights to design and activate commercial strategies that drive sustainable, profitable growth. Working cross‑functionally and with key external partners, you’ll identify emerging opportunities, bring them to life in‑market, and continuously optimise performance to stay ahead of trends and competition. As a trusted category expert, you’ll own the development and execution of tailored, customer‑centric category plans that align to customer strategies, strengthen partnerships, and deliver shared value across multiple channels and formats. Equally important, this is a people‑leadership role. You will lead, coach and inspire a high‑performing team—building capability, curiosity and confidence while modelling best‑in‑class customer partnership and leadership. If you thrive on influence, insight‑led growth and developing talent, this role offers a genuine opportunity to make your mark.

Leadership Principles

• We are customer obsessed. Customers are our starting point. By understanding their needs and leveraging data and consumer insights, we drive mutual success.
• We think big and plan ahead. Through ambition, curiosity, and smart risks, we can accomplish goals, refine processes, and innovate to scale success.
• We bring out the best in our people. We create safe spaces for our people so that trust and empowerment come naturally. Inclusion is about listening first, showing humility, and working together.
• We act like owners. Together, we clear obstacles and do the work that makes us all successful and proud to share McCain.

Accountabilities

• Execute Category Growth Strategy: Drive deployment of Category Growth team strategic priorities for frozen potato and snacking, translating insights into pragmatic initiatives for commercial teams and customers. Support delivery against the commercial 2030 plan and Commercial initiatives.
• Insight Development & Foresight: Curiously assess, synthesise, and communicate market, consumer, customer and operator data to identify growth opportunities and risks. Work closely with Sales, Marketing, and Innovation to ensure commercial plans are future‑focused and leverage broad‑based insights to drive successful outcomes.
• Category Growth Plans: Develop category growth plan for environment or channel. Create & deploy for customers aligned to Customer Growth Plans/JBPs to drive a shared growth agenda with the customer. Deliver customer‑centric activation and growth recommendations across brand & OL to drive customer performance.
• Channel & Format Specific Plans: Create and execute plans by customer format or sales channel which drive mutual growth by leveraging innovation in technology, activation or engagement.
• Marketing & Innovation Effectiveness: Ensure that marketing execution against innovation, core products and communication delivers a 4 way win for McCain, consumer, operator and customer.
• Customer Engagement & Relationship Management: Adopt an active partner approach with key retail and foodservice customers, positioning McCain as the preferred go‑to expert via category reviews, range & menu recommendations, new product presentations, and proactive, tailored thought leadership projects.
• Coach & Develop a Highly Effective Team: Develop a highly effective team through setting clear expectations for performance and personal development, modelling our Leadership Principles, and coaching technical and leadership skills.

Qualifications

• Minimum 5 years’ experience in Category Management, Data Analytics, Market Research, or Commercial Activation within FMCG/CPG sector.
• Proven ability to synthesise complex insights and communicate actionable recommendations.
• Experience in cross‑functional team collaboration and project management.
• Excellent stakeholder relationship management and influencing skills within both internal and external networks.
• Demonstrates growth mindset against development opportunities for business, team and self.

Location

Being in the office every single day is a thing of the past. Here at McCain, we champion hybrid working. This means we don’t have a set expectation of exactly when you need to be in the office – however we do encourage our full‑time, office‑based people to connect in person with others for around half of their working time as that’s the best way for us to build and maintain our connections. Our head office (Customer Experience Centre) is on the outskirts of Scarborough – 1.5 hours away from Leeds City Centre, and about an hour from York. We have lots of colleagues who travel to and from our Experience Centre (even if it is just for a good coffee!) and because hybrid really does mean hybrid at McCain, they get the opportunity to collaborate with their colleagues when they’re in the office, and balance that with working from home to ensure they get a good life‑work balance.

Benefits

• A generous Car Allowance
• An achievable yearly bonus based on personal performance.
• An excellent pension where we will pay double what you do, up to a maximum of 12% of your pay.
• Flexible holidays – where you can buy & sell up to 5 days holiday per year.
• Optional health cash plan
• Cycle to work scheme
• ‘Chips In’ Volunteering Day Off – to make a positive impact to the competitiveness, resilience, and long‑term development of McCain communities across the globe.

Legal Statements

McCain Foods is an equal opportunity employer. As a global family‑owned company, we strive to be the employer of choice in the diverse communities around the world in which we live and work. We recognize that inclusion drives our creativity, resilience, and success and makes our business stronger. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, sex, age, veteran status, disability, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law. McCain is an accessible employer. If you require an accommodation throughout the recruitment process (including alternate formats of materials or accessible meeting rooms), please let us know and we will work with you to find appropriate solutions. Your privacy is important to us. By submitting personal data or information to us, you agree this will be handled in accordance with McCain’s Global Privacy Policy and Global Employee Privacy Policy.