Category Development Manager, Essential Home

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Category Development Manager, Essential Home

City: Slough

With a trusted portfolio of world-class Air Care, Surface, Laundry and Pest Control products, the Essential Home team’s purpose is to Make a House Your Home. Fuelling this newly formed business and leadership team is a diverse and inclusive culture for all. Together, we’re shaping a team with a founder mentality: that listens and learns, and that is entrepreneurial, agile, and action oriented.

With high-quality brands such as Air Wick, Cillit Bang, Calgon and Mortein, now is an exciting time to join a dynamic company full of purpose, pace and energy, that will create a truly unique learning and career opportunity for all.

Our Sales teams at Essential Home play a vital role in delivering our purpose: to Make a House Your Home. We do this by building shared success with our customers and ensuring our trusted Air Care, Surface, Laundry, and Pest Control products are accessible both in-store and online. Operating in highly competitive categories, our Sales function is fast-paced and dynamic, with a strong focus on outperformance across all channels.

As part of a newly formed business with a founder mentality, our team thrives on being entrepreneurial, agile, and action-oriented. We encourage cross-functional collaboration and continuous learning, supported by a diverse and inclusive culture. Joining Sales at Essential Home offers a unique opportunity to grow your career in a purpose-led environment full of energy, innovation, and impact.

About the role

We’re seeking a strategic and commercially focused Category Development Manager to lead the development of category strategies that drive growth for both our brands and our retail partners. In this role, you’ll be responsible for turning insights into action—shaping customer plans, influencing decision-making, and unlocking opportunities across all our categories.

As part of Essential Home, you’ll operate in a fast-paced, entrepreneurial environment where agility and innovation are key. You’ll collaborate cross-functionally to deliver data-driven recommendations, elevate category performance, and contribute to a culture that values ownership, curiosity, and impact. This is a unique opportunity to help define the future of our categories while growing your career in a purpose-led business.

Your responsibilities

• Develop and execute category strategies aligned with brand and customer objectives.
• Lead range reviews, merchandising initiatives, and promotional planning with key retailers.
• Analyse market, shopper, and customer data to identify growth opportunities.
• Partner with Sales, Marketing, and Insights teams to deliver compelling category stories.
• Build strong relationships with retail partners, acting as a trusted advisor.
• Monitor category performance and recommend actions to optimise assortment, pricing, and space.
• Support innovation launches with robust category rationale and activation plans.Take full ownership of the strategic plan for your account, driving sales and managing the profit and loss elements, aligning with the broader company goals.

The experience we\’re looking for

• 5+ years’ experience in Category Management, Category Development, or a related commercial role.
• Strong analytical skills with experience using Nielsen, IRI, Kantar, or similar data sources.
• Proven ability to influence internal and external stakeholders.
• Commercially minded with a deep understanding of the UK retail landscape.
• Excellent communication, presentation, and storytelling skills.
• Experience in FMCG, consumer goods, or retail preferred. Strong commercial insight, and astute P and L management with the capability to develop and execute strategic sales plans.

The skills for success

Key Account Management, Ecommerce, Analysing sales data, Leadership skills, Consumer Insights, Shopper Insights, Category Analysis, Collaboration and partnership skills, Influencing, Consultative Selling, Customer strategy, Channel strategy, Sales strategy development, Perform product planning, Business accumen, commercial accumen, Sales negotiation, P and L Management, Strategy Execution, Operational Excellence.

What we offer

With inclusion at the heart of everything we do, working alongside our four global Employee Resource Groups, we support our people at every step of their career journey, helping them to succeed in their own individual way. We invest in the wellbeing of our people through parental benefits, an Employee Assistance Program to promote mental health, and life insurance for all employees globally. We have a range of other benefits in line with the local market. Through our global share plans we offer the opportunity to save and share in Reckitt\’s potential future successes. For eligible roles, we also offer short-term incentives to recognise, appreciate and reward your work for delivering outstanding results. You will be rewarded in line with Reckitt\’s pay for performance philosophy.

Equality

We recognise that in real life, great people don\’t always \’tick all the boxes\’. That\’s why we hire for potential as well as experience. Even if you don\’t meet every point on the job description, if this role and our company feels like a good fit for you, we still want to hear from you. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, disability or medical condition; colour, ethnicity, race, citizenship, and national origin; religion, faith; pregnancy, family status and caring responsibilities; sexual orientation; sex, gender identity, gender expression, and transgender identity; protected veteran status; size or any other basis protected by appropriate law.

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