Assistant Vice President Category Manager, Grocery (SME – Retail BPS & Technology)

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership & Thought Partnership

• Serve as the senior SME for grocery retail — advising on category strategy, trade terms, market trends, and technology evolution.
• Provide strategic direction on assortment, pricing, promotions, space, private label, and supply chain integration.
• Shape go-to-market strategy for grocery solutions and drive executive-level client conversations.

Client Engagement & Advisory

• Lead discovery sessions, value assessments, and maturity diagnostics for large retail clients.
• Guide transformation roadmaps, operating model design, and capability build-outs across merchandising & category operations.
• Present retail thought leadership and best practices to C-suite stakeholders.

Solution Design & Product Innovation

• Translate retail needs into tech & service requirements for grocery category management platforms and solutions.
• Partner with product & engineering to build digital workflows, analytics, and automation enablers.
• Support UAT, business rule creation, data models, process playbooks, and AI-driven capabilities (pricing engines, promo optimization, recommended assortment models).

BPS & Operations Enablement

• Define delivery models & governance frameworks for grocery shared services (assortment ops, item setup, pricing desk, vendor management desk, planogram ops).
• Build SOPs, capability matrices, SLAs, quality frameworks, and transformation KPIs.
• Drive automation & analytics adoption in category operations.

Market & Category Intelligence

• Monitor consumer trends, inflation dynamics, supplier market shifts, sustainability priorities, and digital retail innovation.
• Build benchmark packs, price ladders, competition scans, and category playbooks for fresh, ambient, frozen, and private label.

Leadership & Capability Building

• Mentor internal teams on grocery retail capability and domain knowledge.
• Support client solutioning, sales pursuits, and deal shaping for large transformation engagements.
• Represent the organization at industry forums, events, and partner platforms.

Qualification & Requirements

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree required (Business, Economics, Retail, Engineering, or similar).
• MBA / Master’s preferred.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience
  • Relevant/Significant years in Grocery Retail (Category Management / Buying / Merchandising leadership).
  • Experience with supermarket / omnichannel / FMCG environments; global exposure (UK/EU/US) preferred.
  • Prior experience in consulting, retail tech, shared services, or transformation roles is highly beneficial.
• Functional Expertise
  • Category strategy & analytics
  • Assortment planning & lifecycle management
  • Pricing & promotions science
  • Vendor & trade terms management
  • Private label development
  • Inventory, demand & supply interface
  • Store & digital shelf execution
• Tech & Data Fluency
  • Hands-on understanding of retail systems: ERP/Merch, RMS, assortment & pricing tools, space planning systems, supplier portals.
  • Familiarity with data models & retail analytics (loyalty, POS, panel, elasticity, basket analysis).
  • Exposure to AI/ML retail use cases; comfort working with engineering & data science teams.
• Leadership Behaviors
  • Executive communication & storytelling
  • Consulting mindset with ability to simplify complexity
  • Strategic thinking with operational execution capability
  • Influencing senior stakeholders across business & technology
  • Strong program oversight & change management experience

Benefits

No information available.