Category Management Assistant / Specialist

We're Hiring: Category Management 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 building customer-focused, commercially successful, and sustainable product categories across diverse markets and channels. Our teams collaborate across Category Management, Merchandising, Buying, Procurement, Supply Chain, Marketing, E-commerce, Finance, Sales, and Operations to optimize category strategy, assortment, pricing, promotions, supplier performance, inventory, and profitability.

The Role

We are seeking an analytical and commercially focused Category Management Assistant / Specialist to support category strategy, market analysis, assortment optimization, supplier management, pricing, promotional planning, inventory performance, and category growth initiatives.

The ideal candidate will use customer, market, sales, inventory, supplier, competitor, and financial data to support category decisions and identify opportunities to improve revenue, margin, product availability, customer experience, and long-term category performance.

Key Responsibilities

• Support the development and execution of category-management strategies aligned with business and customer objectives.
• Assist with category plans, strategic initiatives, commercial calendars, and performance targets.
• Conduct category analysis using sales, margin, volume, inventory, pricing, customer, and market data.
• Monitor category performance by SKU, brand, supplier, channel, location, customer segment, and time period.
• Identify category growth opportunities, performance gaps, risks, and areas requiring corrective action.
• Prepare category reviews, business presentations, dashboards, and management reports.
• Analyze historical sales trends, seasonality, customer demand, promotions, launches, and market conditions.
• Support category forecasting and performance planning.
• Compare actual category performance against budgets, forecasts, targets, and previous periods.
• Prepare variance analysis and investigate significant changes in sales, margin, inventory, and product performance.
• Conduct market research covering category trends, customer preferences, competitors, suppliers, and emerging products.
• Analyze competitor assortments, pricing, promotions, product launches, positioning, and customer propositions.
• Monitor changes in customer behavior, purchasing patterns, product preferences, and market demand.
• Support customer and shopper insights using sales data, customer feedback, reviews, surveys, and other available information.
• Identify assortment gaps, product duplication, underperforming products, and potential range-expansion opportunities.
• Support assortment optimization based on customer demand, sales productivity, profitability, availability, and strategic objectives.
• Assist with SKU rationalization, product additions, product replacements, and product discontinuations.
• Support product lifecycle management from launch through growth, maturity, decline, and exit.
• Coordinate new-product introductions and ensure category requirements are completed before launch.
• Monitor new-product performance against expectations and identify corrective actions where required.
• Support seasonal category planning for holidays, peak periods, campaigns, and major commercial events.
• Maintain category calendars covering launches, promotions, reviews, range changes, and key deadlines.
• Work with Merchandising and Buying teams to translate category strategies into product and assortment plans.
• Coordinate with Procurement and Sourcing teams regarding supplier capabilities, commercial terms, pricing, and product availability.
• Support supplier selection, evaluation, performance reviews, and category-specific supplier initiatives.
• Monitor supplier performance across quality, availability, delivery, pricing, responsiveness, and service levels.
• Identify supplier risks, concentration issues, capacity constraints, and opportunities for supplier diversification.
• Support negotiations by preparing category spend, pricing, market, supplier, and performance information.
• Analyze supplier pricing and identify opportunities for cost reduction, margin improvement, or commercial optimization.
• Monitor category cost structures, gross margin, product profitability, and contribution.
• Support pricing reviews using competitor pricing, market positioning, costs, margins, and customer-value considerations.
• Identify pricing inconsistencies and opportunities for price optimization.
• Support promotional strategy, campaign planning, and promotional calendars.
• Analyze promotional performance, sales uplift, margin impact, inventory movement, and customer response.
• Evaluate discount effectiveness and support recommendations for future promotions.
• Support markdown, clearance, and stock-liquidation activities where applicable.
• Coordinate with Merchandise Planning teams on sales plans, inventory budgets, forecasts, and open-to-buy requirements.
• Monitor category inventory levels, stock cover, availability, sell-through, and inventory productivity.
• Identify stockout risks, excess inventory, slow-moving products, and aging inventory.
• Support replenishment, allocation, and inventory-rebalancing decisions based on category performance.
• Coordinate with Supply Chain and Logistics teams regarding inbound stock, lead times, delivery risks, and product availability.
• Support e-commerce category management, including online assortment, product visibility, search performance, promotions, and availability.
• Monitor digital category performance and identify opportunities to improve online conversion and product discovery.
• Coordinate product content, specifications, attributes, images, descriptions, and other category information.
• Support retail merchandising activities including planograms, shelf allocation, display standards, and space optimization where applicable.
• Analyze sales and profitability by store, channel, market, customer segment, and product group.
• Support space and range productivity analysis where relevant to the business model.
• Develop category business cases for new products, suppliers, markets, channels, and strategic initiatives.
• Conduct scenario analysis to assess the potential impact of pricing, assortment, promotions, supply changes, and market conditions.
• Maintain accurate category information across ERP, merchandising, planning, PIM, e-commerce, BI, and other approved systems.
• Develop and maintain category dashboards covering sales, margin, inventory, pricing, promotions, suppliers, and customer performance.
• Track category KPIs and provide regular reporting to management.
• Identify opportunities to improve category processes, data quality, reporting, automation, and analytical capabilities.
• Support digital tools, analytics, and technology initiatives that improve category-management effectiveness.
• Maintain confidentiality of sales, pricing, supplier, customer, financial, and other commercially sensitive information.
• Conduct post-season and post-campaign reviews and document lessons learned.
• Support continuous-improvement initiatives designed to increase category growth, profitability, customer relevance, and operational efficiency.

Key Performance Indicators

• Category sales revenue
• Category sales growth
• Gross margin
• Gross margin percentage
• Category profitability
• Category contribution
• Market share
• Sales per SKU
• Margin per SKU
• Category productivity
• Assortment productivity
• Sell-through rate
• Stock turnover
• Inventory productivity
• Stock availability
• Stockout rate
• Excess inventory rate
• Slow-moving inventory
• Aging inventory
• Stock-cover accuracy
• New-product performance
• New-product launch success
• Product lifecycle performance
• Supplier performance
• Supplier availability
• Supplier service-level compliance
• Supplier pricing competitiveness
• Cost savings
• Cost avoidance
• 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
• Category project completion
• Reporting accuracy and timeliness
• Process improvement completion

Ideal Candidate

The successful candidate should have strong experience in category management, category planning, merchandising, buying, procurement, retail planning, commercial analysis, 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 strategy.
• Experience analyzing category sales, margin, inventory, pricing, supplier, customer, and market data.
• Strong commercial awareness and understanding of retail, wholesale, or e-commerce business models.
• Experience supporting category strategies, range reviews, assortment optimization, 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, growth opportunities, performance gaps, and commercial risks.
• Strong analytical and numerical skills.
• Experience preparing category reviews, dashboards, presentations, business cases, and management reports.
• Strong Excel and spreadsheet capabilities.
• Familiarity with ERP, category-management, merchandising, planning, PIM, e-commerce, procurement, or business-intelligence systems.
• Understanding of inventory planning, replenishment, allocation, and stock productivity.
• Experience working with suppliers, manufacturers, brands, distributors, retailers, or commercial partners.
• Strong supplier and stakeholder-management capabilities.
• Excellent communication, presentation, and cross-functional coordination skills.