Trading Lead

Primark; Reading; On-site; GBP 65,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

27 days leave plus holidays

Flexible working

Healthcare and pension

Job summary

Primark is seeking a Trading Lead who will partner with Central Trade & Planning, BMD, and Commercial Retail to provide data, insights and recommendations on opportunities across the business.

You'll specialise in Pricing & Promotions, Markdown, Licence and Campaign management, with the ability to rotate areas of specialism to meet business needs, leading a analytics-driven team to deliver high-quality outputs.

Qualifications

• Experience operating at a Lead/Merchandiser level.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
• Collaborative with senior stakeholders.
• Strong analytical skills with dashboards (Tableau).
• Commercial mindset with numerical accuracy.
• Interest in product and customer experience.

Responsibilities

• Markdown: manage weekly listing and markdown spend.
• Carryover/seasonality: manage carryover and stock; support BMD; create terminal stock glidepath.
• In-Season Trading: assist monthly reforecasting; support OTB/PSR processes.
• Pricing and Promotions: oversee pricing accuracy and leadership in stores.
• Licence: manage sales reporting, forecasting and invoicing for Licensed DTR.
• Reporting and problem solving: analyse data and derive insights.
• Leadership: coach and mentor analytics-driven team outputs.

Skills

Lead Merchandiser

Communication

Collaboration

Stakeholder mgmt

Analytical skills

Tableau

IP/WSSI knowledge

Customer experience

Planning & organisation

Attention to detail

Tools

Tableau

Job description

Because your perspective shapes trends. Innovate, your way. The Trading Lead role works in partnership with our Central Trade & Planning Team, BMD, and Commercial Retail functions as well as other internal teams, providing data, insights and recommendations on current and future opportunities across the business.

This role will provide support and relevant data to offer direction on strategic, commercial and analytical decision making to key stakeholders. The role will specialise in Pricing & Promotions, Markdown, Licence and Campaign management with the ability to rotate areas of specialism based on the needs of the business.

What You’ll Do As An Trading Lead

• Markdown: Manage the weekly listing process including analysis of listings and impact on potential markdown spend.
• Carryover, seasonality and terminal stocks: Manage the carryover processes in a timely manner using merchandising experience to challenge requests from BMD & ensure accuracy; provide training and support to the B&M teams; create and maintain terminal stock glidepath while analysing sales, stock and markdown to minimise risk.
• In-Season Trading: Support the Head of Central Trade with the monthly reforecasting process, including analysis of the Position Sheet and First Week Reporting submits by the B&M teams; identify key trading messages and support with the Position Sheet and OTB meetings; oversee PSR block/unblock requests from BMD teams; deputise for the Head of Central Trade in key meetings where needed.
• Pricing and Promotions: Oversee internal management of Pricing to ensure price leadership and accurate pricing in stores.
• Licence: Own and manage the sales reporting, forecasting and auditing aspects of the Licensed DTR process; partner with the Licensed team, BMD teams & Licensors to provide accurate sales & invoicing; own and manage the annual sales auditing process for DTR.
• Reporting Analysis & Problem Solving: Responsible for data analysis for area of specialism.
• Leadership: Lead, manage, mentor and coach a team to deliver analytics driven results and high-quality outputs.

What You’ll Bring

• Experience operating at a Lead/Merchandiser level.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills displaying confidence and strong collaboration when presenting information to senior stakeholders.
• Highly collaborative, comfortable reaching out and building relationships with teams across the business, while demonstrating confidence to challenge and influence senior stakeholders.
• Experience managing and developing strong and productive working relationships.
• Strong commercial mindset, with excellent numerical and analytical skills (including creating reports & dashboards in Tableau) & knowledge of IP/WSSI with a high level of accuracy.
• Genuine interest in product and passion for enhancing the customer experience.
• Excellent planning and organisation skills, ability to multi‑task, plan and prioritise work schedule for self and team and work within agreed timescales.
• Displays a positive outlook and demonstrates a strong ability to work at pace under pressure while focusing on results.
• Excellent attention to detail and an ability to analyse and interrogate high volumes of data while focusing on the higher‑level overview.

What You’ll Get

• 27 days of leave, plus bank holidays and the option to buy 5 additional days.
• Flexible working, opportunity for an early Friday finish, and a subsidised cafeteria.
• Healthcare, pension and potential bonus.

All offers of employment are subject to background checks, including right to work, reference education and, for some roles, criminal and financial checks. If you have any concerns please reach out to our talent acquisition team to discuss.

We welcome applicants with a range of abilities and encourage those who need reasonable adjustments during the recruitment journey – such as extended time or breaks between online assessments, a sign language interpreter, mobility access or assistive technology – to contact our talent acquisition specialist.