Senior Category Manager
About The Position
Microsoft Consumer Sales works to grow the business and create meaningful customer connections across physical retail stores and digital partner channels for Windows, Microsoft 365, Surface, and Copilot. The Surface business aims to profitably grow Surface volume and share by selling to retail partners through consumer insights, market data, store-level analysis, and device sales information, and by selling through partners with promotions and full-funnel marketing plans. The Senior Category Manager owns the Americas CPFR/ADP demand-planning process and consolidated Sell-In outlook, ensuring plans support revenue and gross-margin targets and align with channel inventory and Sell-Through goals. The role establishes the operating cadence for synchronizing supply and demand, provides the context and insight behind plans, and coordinates across account, operations, finance, supply chain, and marketing teams. It leads cross-account planning and inventory consolidation through influence, while account relationships remain with account leads.
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.
- 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.
Nice To Haves
- Master's degree in Business Administration, Business, Marketing, Communications, Economics, Public Relations, or a related field and 6+ years of relevant work experience, or a bachelor's degree in a listed field and 8+ years of relevant work experience, 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.
- Run 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 to 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 build contingency and agility models to 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.
- Improve Sell-Through demand forecasting and channel-inventory monitoring.
- Own the Sell-In outlook by account within the consolidated Americas plan.
- Provide context and insight behind the Sell-In plan, including assumptions, drivers, and risks.
- Coordinate North American account, operations, finance, supply chain, and marketing teams to converge on one plan, leading through influence across partner and direct teams.
- Partner with U.S. and Distribution/Canada account leads, including D&H, Ingram, and Synnex, to align Sell-In and inventory positions.
- Own cross-account planning and consolidation while account relationships remain with account leads.
- Optimize Microsoft, distributor, and end-retailer inventory positions across the portfolio.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
