Category Assistant / Specialist

We're Hiring: Category Assistant / Specialist

Location: United Arab Emirates (Remote)

Employment Type: Full-Time

Experience Level: Mid-Level to Senior

Work Arrangement: Fully Remote

About Us

We are a globally focused organization committed to developing competitive, customer-focused, and commercially successful product categories across diverse markets and sales channels. Our teams collaborate across Category Management, Merchandising, Buying, Procurement, Supply Chain, Marketing, E-commerce, Finance, and Operations to optimize product assortments, pricing, availability, supplier performance, and category profitability.

The Role

We are seeking an analytical and commercially focused Category Assistant / Specialist to support category strategy, assortment planning, sales analysis, supplier coordination, pricing, promotions, inventory management, and category performance improvement.

The ideal candidate will analyze market, customer, sales, inventory, supplier, and competitor information to support category decisions and identify opportunities to improve revenue, margin, product availability, customer experience, and overall category performance.

Key Responsibilities

• Support the development and implementation of category strategies aligned with business and customer objectives.
• Assist with category planning, product selection, assortment development, and commercial initiatives.
• Maintain accurate category, product, supplier, pricing, and merchandising information.
• Analyze category sales, margin, volume, market share, inventory, and product-performance data.
• Monitor category performance by SKU, brand, supplier, channel, location, customer segment, and time period.
• Identify best-selling, slow-moving, declining, emerging, and underperforming products.
• Prepare category performance reports, dashboards, and management presentations.
• Support category reviews and prepare insights, recommendations, and action plans.
• Conduct market research to identify customer trends, emerging products, changing preferences, and category opportunities.
• Analyze competitor assortments, pricing, promotions, product launches, and market positioning.
• Monitor category pricing and identify pricing gaps, inconsistencies, and opportunities.
• Support price reviews and recommendations based on market conditions, competition, costs, margins, and customer value.
• Assist with assortment optimization and identify category gaps, duplication, and opportunities for rationalization.
• Support product introductions, new-product launches, product extensions, and product discontinuations.
• Coordinate with Merchandising and Buying teams on product selection and assortment requirements.
• Work with Procurement and Sourcing teams to evaluate supplier options, commercial terms, pricing, and availability.
• Coordinate supplier and brand information required for category planning and execution.
• Monitor supplier performance relating to availability, pricing, quality, delivery, promotions, and service.
• Support supplier reviews and maintain supplier performance records.
• Analyze supplier concentration and identify opportunities for diversification or alternative sources.
• Coordinate with Inventory and Planning teams to monitor stock levels, availability, stock cover, and replenishment requirements.
• Identify category-level stockout risks, excess inventory, slow-moving products, and aging stock.
• Support replenishment and inventory-allocation recommendations based on category performance and demand.
• Analyze sales trends and support category demand forecasts.
• Coordinate with Merchandise Planning teams on sales plans, inventory plans, seasonal requirements, and open-to-buy considerations.
• Support seasonal category planning and promotional calendars.
• Coordinate category activities for holidays, peak seasons, launches, campaigns, and major commercial events.
• Analyze promotional performance, sales uplift, margin impact, and inventory outcomes.
• Support promotional planning and evaluate discount effectiveness.
• Assist with markdown, clearance, and stock-liquidation strategies where applicable.
• Monitor category profitability, gross margin, markdown impact, and contribution.
• Analyze product and supplier profitability to identify opportunities for improvement.
• Support category financial planning, budgets, targets, and performance forecasts.
• Prepare variance analysis comparing actual performance against budgets, forecasts, targets, and previous periods.
• Identify key category risks, opportunities, performance gaps, and required corrective actions.
• Support customer and shopper analysis using sales data, customer feedback, reviews, surveys, and other available insights.
• Monitor customer behavior, purchasing patterns, product preferences, and demand changes.
• Support e-commerce category management, including digital assortment, product visibility, search, promotions, and online availability where applicable.
• Coordinate product content, specifications, images, attributes, and descriptions with relevant teams.
• Monitor category presentation and merchandising standards across stores, websites, marketplaces, and other channels.
• Support planogram, shelf, display, and space-allocation activities where applicable.
• Track category and product lifecycle performance from launch through growth, maturity, decline, and discontinuation.
• Maintain category calendars covering launches, promotions, seasonal activities, reviews, and key deadlines.
• Coordinate cross-functional category projects and maintain action trackers.
• Support business cases for new products, suppliers, category expansions, or strategic initiatives.
• Maintain accurate category data across ERP, merchandising, planning, PIM, e-commerce, and business-intelligence systems.
• Prepare category dashboards covering sales, margin, inventory, pricing, availability, promotions, and supplier performance.
• Track category KPIs and provide timely reporting to management.
• Identify opportunities to automate category reporting, data analysis, and routine processes.
• Support continuous-improvement initiatives focused on category growth, profitability, customer experience, and operational efficiency.

Key Performance Indicators

• Category sales revenue
• Category sales growth
• Gross margin
• Gross margin percentage
• Category market share
• Category contribution
• Sales per SKU
• Margin per SKU
• Category productivity
• Product sell-through
• Stock turnover
• Inventory productivity
• Stock cover
• Stock availability
• Stockout rate
• Excess inventory
• Slow-moving inventory
• Aging inventory
• Assortment productivity
• Assortment compliance
• New-product performance
• New-product launch success
• Product lifecycle performance
• Supplier performance
• Supplier availability
• Supplier service-level compliance
• Supplier pricing competitiveness
• Price competitiveness
• Pricing accuracy
• Promotional sales uplift
• Promotional ROI
• Promotional margin performance
• Markdown effectiveness
• Markdown rate
• Category forecast accuracy
• Sales-plan achievement
• Inventory-plan adherence
• Customer conversion
• Customer satisfaction
• E-commerce category performance
• Product content accuracy
• Reporting accuracy and timeliness
• Category project completion
• Process improvement completion

Ideal Candidate

The successful candidate should have strong experience in category management, merchandising, buying, retail planning, commercial analysis, procurement, e-commerce, product management, or supplier management, preferably within retail, fashion, consumer goods, e-commerce, marketplaces, wholesale, distribution, or other product-focused environments.

The candidate should demonstrate:

• Strong understanding of category-management principles and commercial planning.
• Experience analyzing category sales, margin, inventory, product, supplier, and customer data.
• Strong commercial awareness and understanding of retail or e-commerce trading dynamics.
• Experience supporting assortment planning, product selection, category reviews, and product lifecycle management.
• Strong understanding of pricing, promotions, markdowns, and category profitability.
• Experience conducting competitor, market, customer, and product research.
• Ability to identify category trends, gaps, opportunities, and performance risks.
• Strong analytical and numerical skills.
• Experience preparing category reports, dashboards, presentations, and business analyses.
• Strong Excel and spreadsheet capabilities.
• Familiarity with ERP, merchandising, planning, PIM, e-commerce, procurement, BI, or category-management systems.
• Understanding of inventory planning, replenishment, allocation, and stock productivity.
• Experience working with suppliers, brands, manufacturers, distributors, or commercial partners.
• Strong supplier and stakeholder-management skills.
• Excellent communication, coordination, and presentation capabilities.
• Ability to manage multiple categories, projects, priorities, and deadlines.
• Strong problem-solving and decision-support capabilities.
• Ability to translate complex data into clear commercial recommendations.
• Strong attention to detail and data accuracy.
• Ability to work effectively with Merchandising, Buying, Procurement, Planning, Supply Chain, Marketing, E-commerce, Finance, and Operations teams.
• Experience working with international and distributed teams is highly desirable.
• Excellent written and verbal English communication skills.
• A proactive, analytical, commercially minded, and customer-focused approach.