Senior Category Manager

Microsoft•Redmond, WA

1d•$106,400 - $222,600

About The Position

At Microsoft Consumer Sales, the team works to earn fans and drive growth by creating meaningful connections throughout consumers’ shopping journeys in physical retail stores and digital partner channels. The role supports profitable growth across Windows, Surface, and Microsoft 365, while helping customers discover Copilot. Within Surface, the business goal is to profitably grow volume and share through retail-partner sell-in and sell-through activity. This includes using consumer insights, market data, store-level analysis, and device sales information to assess performance and develop seasonal, launch, and sustain plans, as well as planning and executing promotions and full-funnel marketing to drive purchase intent, conversion, post-purchase advocacy, and customer lifetime value. The Senior Category Manager owns the Americas CPFR/ADP demand-planning process, Sell-In outlook and consolidation, weekly operating rhythm, and cross-team coordination. The role aligns demand, revenue and gross-margin targets, channel inventory, and supply readiness across account, operations, finance, supply-chain, and marketing teams, leading through influence across partner and direct channels.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Business, Marketing, Communications, Economics, Public Relations, Engineering, or a related field and 4+ years of category management, product management, marketing strategy, business planning, product planning, or related work experience; or equivalent experience.
Experience managing and expanding a category and attaining sales and profitability targets within a complex organization, such as a multinational or matrixed organization, or equivalent experience.

Nice To Haves

Master’s degree in Business Administration, Business, Marketing, Communications, Economics, Public Relations, or a related field and 6+ years of related work experience; or a bachelor’s degree in a listed or related field and 8+ years of related work experience; or equivalent experience.
4+ years of experience managing and expanding a category and attaining sales and profitability targets within a complex organization, such as a multinational or matrixed organization, or equivalent experience.

Responsibilities

Own the Americas CPFR/ADP process end to end, including cadence, assumptions, consolidation, and publishing the demand signal.
Ensure Sell-In revenue and gross-margin targets are met or exceeded.
Conduct monthly demand-plan reviews with each market-maker account and keep the consolidated plan within tolerance of financial targets.
Reconcile Sell-In and channel inventory against Sell-Through and weeks-of-supply targets, aligning signals across Sales, Channel Operations, Category, and Supply Chain.
Own launch and end-of-life supply readiness, and develop contingency and agility models that translate demand shifts into supply actions.
Establish and run the weekly operating cadence: Monday supply update, Tuesday account outlook for Sell-In and Sell-Through, Wednesday consolidated Americas Sell-In view versus plan, and Thursday readout to Worldwide Category.
Continuously improve Sell-Through demand forecasting and channel-inventory monitoring.
Own the account-level Sell-In outlook within the consolidated Americas plan; account and category owners set Sell-Through and promotional plans by account.
Provide context and insight behind the Sell-In plan, including assumptions, drivers, and risks.
Coordinate North America account, operations, finance, supply-chain, and marketing teams to align on one plan, leading through influence across partner and direct channels.
Partner with U.S. and Distribution/Canada account leads, including D&H, Ingram, and Synnex, to align Sell-In and inventory positions; own the cross-account process and consolidation while account relationships remain with account leads.
Optimize Microsoft, distributor, and end-retailer inventory positions across the portfolio.