Junior Category Manager

Overview

The Junior Category Manager supports the delivery of category plans across Herbs & Spices, Recipe Mixes, Hot Sauce and Mustard. Working closely with Category, Shopper and other cross-functional teams, this role combines analysis, insight, and commercial execution to help optimize category and brand performance.

You will be directly involved in preparing and delivering category presentations to customers, managing day-to-day reporting and supporting key initiatives such as range reviews, new product launches and promotional evaluations.

Responsibilities

• Analyse category performance, shopper behaviour and competitor activity to identify trends and future challenges & opportunities
• Build regular reports and dashboards to track sales, distribution and share performance
• Support the Category team in translating data into clear, actionable insights
• Manage day-to-day relationships with selected retail customers, acting as a key category contact
• Deliver category presentations and range reviews directly to customers, presenting insights and recommendations with confidence & conviction
• Work collaboratively with buyers and retailer category & merchandising teams to influence range, space, fixturisation/merchandising and pricing & promotional decisions
• Support wider customer engagement activity, ensuring category vision, drivers, strategies and execution plans are aligned across both internal and external stakeholders
• Assist in managing the portfolio and product lifecycle, from NPD through to SKU discontinuations
• Support planogram builds, range analysis and activation at launch

Performance Monitoring

• Tracking and reporting on key performance indicators including sales, distribution and market share
• Support post-promotion and post-launch evaluations to identify key learnings and recommend actions

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Work closely with Insight, Analytics, Sales and Brand/Shopper Marketing teams to align on category vision, drivers & strategies
• Support ad-hoc data analysis and research projects to inform longer term commercial planning

Candidate Profile

• Relevant experience – ideally in FMCG
• Inquisitive, analytical – background of working with data
• Problem solving
• Team working
• Good communication skills
• Influencing skills and stakeholder management
• Ability to build strong cross-functional relationships
• Knowledge of data platforms like Nielsen, IGD, Mintel, DMS