Assistant Category Manager

The Arnott's Group; Strathfield Municipal Council; On-site; AUD 90,000 - 115,000; Full time

Job summary

The Arnott's Group is seeking an Assistant Category Manager to support a meals & beverages portfolio in Australia. The role focuses on turning data into actionable recommendations, driving category growth, and partnering with major retailers across Sales, Marketing, Finance and Supply Chain.

You may have strong analytical capabilities or customer-facing experience, with a focus on retailer engagement and category storytelling. Hybrid or on-site work is possible within Australia.

Qualifications

• Experience in FMCG category management or related commercial function.
• Experience with data-driven category storytelling.
• Strong analytical skills and ability to turn insights into recommendations.
• Experience with Power BI or similar data platforms.
• Excellent cross-functional communication and relationship-building.

Responsibilities

• Support category reviews, planning sessions and joint business planning with key retail customers.
• Analyze shopper, category and market data to uncover growth opportunities.
• Build category recommendations and commercial stories for customer conversations.
• Support innovation launches, forecasting and post-launch performance tracking.
• Manage ranging activities, assortment reviews and product lifecycle recommendations.
• Partner with Sales, Marketing, Revenue Growth Management and Finance to deliver priorities.
• Provide insights influencing strategy and decision making across the portfolio.

Skills

FMCG category management

Category insights

Data analysis

Stakeholder engagement

Power BI

JDA Space Planning

Tools

Power BI

JDA Space Planning

Job description

At The Arnott's Group, we're passionate about creating delicious moments for consumers every day. An exciting opportunity has become available for an Assistant Category Manager to join our Meals & Beverages team, supporting a portfolio worth more than $150 million in annual sales.

Reporting to the Category Development Lead, you'll play a key role in turning data into actionable recommendations, supporting category growth strategies, partnering with major retailers, and helping bring new products to market. This is a highly visible role with broad exposure across Sales, Marketing, Finance and Supply Chain, offering the opportunity to build commercial capability while making a genuine impact on business performance.

We're open to different backgrounds and experiences. You may be a highly analytical category professional who loves uncovering insights from data, or you may bring stronger customer-facing experience and be ready to take greater ownership of retailer engagement and category storytelling.

About You

You're naturally curious, commercially minded and enjoy turning complex data into clear recommendations that drive growth. You'll bring:

• Experience in FMCG category management, category insights, category development or a related commercial function
• Experience within FMCG or another fast-paced, consumer-led environment (not mandatory)
• Strong analytical skills with the ability to identify trends and turn insights into compelling commercial stories
• Experience using category and shopper data platforms such as Coles Synergy, Quantium and/or Circana (IRI)
• Confidence building relationships across Sales, Marketing, Finance and Supply teams
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to influence stakeholders
• Excellent organisation skills and the ability to manage multiple priorities simultaneously

Experience with Power BI and JDA Space Planning will be highly regarded.

What Your Days Look Like

No two days are the same. You could be:

• Supporting category reviews, planning sessions and joint business planning with key retail customers
• Analysing shopper, category and market data to uncover growth opportunities
• Building category recommendations and commercial stories to support customer conversations
• Supporting innovation launches, forecasting and post-launch performance tracking
• Managing ranging activities, assortment reviews and product lifecycle recommendations
• Partnering with Sales, Marketing, Revenue Growth Management and Finance teams to deliver business priorities
• Providing insights that influence strategy, execution and decision making across the portfolio

The Ingredients for Success

Success in this role comes from balancing analytical rigour with commercial thinking. You'll thrive if you enjoy:

• Working with large and complex data sets
• Finding opportunities hidden in the numbers
• Building strong cross-functional relationships
• Presenting recommendations with confidence
• Taking ownership and driving outcomes
• Learning quickly in a fast-moving FMCG environment
• Hybrid ways of working
• Career development across one of Australia's most loved FMCG businesses
• Exposure to major retailers and category leadership teams
• Access to health, wellbeing and employee benefits programs

Our Culture

The Arnott's Group is home to some of Australasia's most trusted and iconic brands. As a proud and independent business, we have the freedom to move quickly, think differently and create opportunities for our people to grow.

We celebrate diversity, value collaboration and encourage our people to bring fresh thinking to everything they do. If you're looking for a role where you can develop your commercial capability, build meaningful relationships and make a real contribution to the success of well-loved brands, we'd love to hear from you.