Customer Category Manager

[axr] Recruitment & Search; Sydney; On-site; AUD 110,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

[axr] Recruitment & Search is seeking a Customer Category Manager to own the category agenda across select channels outside major grocery. You will translate data into actionable category stories and drive growth with senior leaders and buyers in a fast-paced FMCG environment.

You’ll influence multiple stakeholders, build robust commercial plans, and bring a strategic mindset to long-term channel growth and partnership development.

Qualifications

• Category or trade marketing experience and ability to build category stories from data.
• Commercial exposure with P&L responsibilities beyond slides.
• Experience in impulse, convenience, OOH, or food service channels, or willingness to move into them.
• Ability to influence buyers, brand managers and directors without formal authority.

Responsibilities

• Own the category agenda across channels outside major grocery.
• Build practical commercial plans that buyers can execute.
• Pull data into compelling category stories to drive decisions.
• Collaborate with senior leadership and cross-functional teams to scale growth.

Skills

Category/Trade Marketing

P&L Exposure

Channel Experience

Influence Stakeholders

Job description

Develop your commercial category abilities under a brilliant leader in a renowned, global FMCG business.

• Not just another Category role
• Own the category agenda across high-growth channels outside major grocery
• Learn from one of the strongest category leaders in FMCG

You’ve got category fundamentals. You can pull data apart, find the story, and build a case that gets people moving. But you're ready for more ownership and impact.

A major global FMCG business is looking for a Customer Category Manager to own the category agenda across some of it's most important channels outside of major grocery.

You’ll drive the category agenda in building commercial plans that actually work for buyers who aren't Coles and Woolworths.

Some of those buyers are sophisticated and ready for strategic conversations. Others need convincing there's even an opportunity. You’ll need to flex between the two - and bring internal stakeholders along with you.

This is one of three roles reporting directly to an exceptional Head of Category - respected, well-liked, and with a track record of building excellent category teams.

You’ll have genuine access to senior leadership, be customer-facing regularly, and have the autonomy to shape how your channels grow. The business is privately owned, financially strong, and plans in decades rather than quarters, so there's a genuine appreciation for long-term thinking.

You’ll need:

• Category or trade marketing experience - you understand how to build a category story from data.
• Commercial exposure - you've worked with or alongside a P&L, not just a slide deck.
• Time spent in impulse, convenience, OOH, or food service channels (or a genuine appetite to move into them).
• The ability to influence people who don't report to you - buyers, brand managers, customer directors - without waiting for a formal process to do it

This role will suit someone a step or two into their category career, or a salesperson with some category smarts, who wants breadth, autonomy, and the chance to build something from scratch in a business that will back them to do it.