Senior Manager, Skin Care Category Strategy & Planning

Unilever•Hoboken, NJ

About The Position

The Category Strategy & Planning (CS&P) organization leads category strategy and channel and customer planning for the U.S. Skin Care business within the Beauty & Wellbeing Business Unit. This role is a leadership position with responsibility for overseeing Category Strategy & Planning across the Vaseline, Dove and Shea Moisture Skin Care. The Category Planning function partners closely with Field Sales, Marketing (local and global), Shopper Marketing, Finance, Net Revenue Management, Supply Chain, and Trade Marketing to bring commercial strategies to life at retail—including eCommerce—through flawless execution that delivers U.S. Skin Care top‑ and bottom‑line growth targets. The Senior Manager, Category Strategy & Planning – Skin Care will serve as the voice of the customer and shopper, ensuring channel and customer insights are embedded into short‑ and long‑term brand and customer commercial plans that align with retailer strategies and deliver profitable growth for both Unilever and its customers. Find your purpose at Unilever. You will lead innovations, big and small, that will make our business win and grow. You will learn from brilliant business leaders and colleagues in a truly global and diverse culture to ultimately become a better you. If you are driven by commercial acumen, like winning and are passionate about growing categories with customers then this role is just for you.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree required, MBA preferred
At least +5 years’ experience in Customer Development, Account Management, Trade Marketing, Category Strategy, and/or Brand Marketing Operations within Consumer Goods industry
Results driven and ownership mindset to achieve set goals and KPIs
Proven ability to demonstrate analytical thinking, data-driven decision making, and ability to influence through strategy story-telling through data and insights
Retail, eCommerce, and Omnichannel experience preferred
Ability to think strategically, and produce results in a highly entrepreneurial environment
Excellent oral/written and presentation skills; ability to tailor your communication style across a multitude of disciplines leadership levels
Energized by collaborating with cross-functional partners on new and creative ways to solve business problems
Encourages ownership to resolve issues where they are happening. Holds others and organization accountable for delivery.
High comfort level using IRI/Nielsen (POS data), Numerator (panel data)
Very Good level of business acumen
Strategic and analytic thinking incl. solution orientated mindset
Senior Stakeholder Management & Strategic influencing
Excellent Team & leadership skills
Skills Category Growth Management Channels Data Literacy Executional Excellence Commercial Strategy Digital Commerce Leadership

Responsibilities

Lead profitable growth for the U.S. Skin Care category, bringing an entrepreneurial, challenger mindset to reignite competitive performance and accelerate category momentum.
Translate data into insight and insight into action by developing and executing robust commercial plans aligned to the Category Growth Strategy and key Category Value Drivers.
Own the development of annual growth targets, trade investment budgets, and forecasts that ladder directly to the Hair Care P&L and deliver both top‑ and bottom‑line KPIs.
Set and deploy channel strategy for the category, ensuring holistic, disciplined customer investment across channels and customers to drive sustainable, profitable growth.
Lead deep‑dive commercial analytics, including pricing architecture, distribution gaps, competitive dynamics, trade optimization, promotional effectiveness, and shopper insights to inform strategic and tactical decision‑making.
Serve as the voice of the customer, channel, and shopper within IBP and JBP processes, while also representing category and brand priorities externally with customers and internally with sales and field teams.
Own category assortment and promotional strategy, leveraging data‑driven analysis to continuously optimize promotional plans, improve ROI, and enhance in‑market execution.
Partner closely with field sales and cross‑functional teams to ensure best‑in‑class in‑store activation, flawless execution of national cross‑category and cross‑customer tentpole programs, and successful innovation launch planning and execution.
This is a team leadership role requiring to bring dynamic attitude and passion the growing the category and talent in the organization.
You will need to demonstrate excellent leadership skill with particular focus on Talent Catalyst that builds an exclusive cross-functional team that embraces end to end collaboration while stretching each other to reach ambition goals
Passion for High Performance to over-deliver against assigned targets while managing market volatility by having an agile mindset to find creative solutions to achieve results
BUSINESS ACUMEN: Creates sustainable growth with purpose, engaging different partners across the system for change.