Senior Manager, Category Leadership – Convenience Retail

Overview : This role will serve as a Category Leadership partner across a portfolio of Convenience Retail customers, including RaceTrac and Pilot, delivering differentiated insights and recommendations that help drive customer and category growth. This individual will leverage shopper, category, customer, and marketplace insights from a variety of internal and external sources to identify opportunities and develop fact-based recommendations. The Senior Manager will partner closely with Sales, customers, Bottling partners, and cross-functional Commercial teams to support customer strategy, annual planning, category development, and execution. Success in this role requires strong analytical capability, customer orientation, strategic thinking, and the ability to translate complex information into clear, actionable recommendations. What You’ll Do for Us Key Responsibilities : Support Category Leadership across an assigned portfolio of Convenience Retail customers. Develop customer-specific category insights, recommendations, and growth strategies grounded in shopper, consumer, customer, and marketplace data. Serve as a subject matter expert on Convenience Retail, beverage categories, shopper behavior, and relevant marketplace trends. Build strong working relationships with customer and Sales partners and contribute to trusted, objective category discussions. Support annual customer category situation assessments, Joint Business Planning, and other strategic customer planning processes. Identify opportunities and risks across assortment, space, merchandising, innovation, and shopper engagement. Develop impartial and objective total beverage recommendations designed to improve category performance for the customer. Prepare and deliver internal and customer-facing presentations covering category trends, shopper insights, competitive dynamics, assortment, space, and growth opportunities. Lead or support shopper and category analyses and translate findings into clear actions through compelling storylines. Partner with Space Strategy and other cross-functional teams to evaluate space and assortment opportunities. Influence cross-functional resources across Sales, Bottlers, Category Leadership, Shopper Insights, RGM, Commercial Strategy, and other teams to deliver integrated customer solutions. Manage multiple customer priorities and projects, determining where deeper analysis and engagement will create the greatest value. Identify relevant learnings and best practices that can be shared across the broader Convenience Retail portfolio. What You’ll Need Functional Skills : Advanced analytical and problem-solving capability. Strong ability to translate data into actionable customer and category recommendations. Strong working knowledge of syndicated data sources such as NielsenIQ and Circana. Experience with customer-level, shopper-card, or loyalty data is strongly preferred. Strong Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint skills; experience with Power BI and/or space-planning tools is a plus. Strong oral and written communication, storytelling, and influencing skills. Ability to synthesize complex information into clear, customer-ready recommendations. Ability to manage and prioritize multiple projects and customer needs. Ability to connect Category Leadership recommendations to broader customer business strategies. Strong cross-functional collaboration and influence skills. Minimum Qualifications : Bachelor’s degree in Business, Marketing, Finance, Economics, Analytics, or related field. 5+ years of experience in CPG, retail, Category Leadership, Category Management, Shopper Insights, Customer Sales, Commercial Strategy, or a related field. Demonstrated experience using data and insights to influence business decisions. Experience working with retail customers or customer-facing commercial teams. Advanced analytical capability and proficiency with syndicated data. Proven communication, storytelling,