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Senior Director, Category Management

Sysco SMS - Salinas

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Job ID R198804 Date posted 04/30/2025

Employment Type Full time

Company name US6469 Sysco Payroll, Division of Sysco Resources Services, LLC

Compensation $158,700.00 - $264,500.00

Compensation Range The compensation range provided is in compliance with state specific laws. Factors that may be used to determine your actual rate of pay include your specific skills, years of experience and other factors.

Requirements Responsible for managing work across multiple supply chain sub-families, or develop/implement strategies that optimize the supply chain process. Planning address capacity issues and production location decisions in support of business goals, which includes customer inventory planning, cargo planning, and strategies to improve logistics service center operations.

Description

JOB SUMMARY

Sysco is a Multibillion-dollar E-commerce, B to B food service business and the global leader in selling, marketing, and supplying food products to restaurants, businesses, health care locations, education, travel and food service management around the world. We do business in over 90 countries internationally and this role will bring customer centric solutions to the markets for Sysco.

Our Purpose is to connect the world to share food and care for one another.  We define our mission at Sysco as delivering success for our customers though leading products, service, and people. Sysco is embarking on a bold and exciting transformational journey to become the most

customer centric organization globally. They are committed to supporting growth objectives. 

and accelerating transformation across Sysco. To achieve this objective, Sysco is transforming merchandising to deliver on our customers’ new, more digitally enabled expectations of service. This team will support the development and execution of multiyear, product-focused strategic business plans for new areas of growth, as well as sharing best practices with Sysco’s global merchandising teams.

The Senior Director, Category Management leadership role is responsible for the Development, planning and execution of center-led merchandising category activities including assortment strategy, supplier relationships, sourcing, profits & losses, informing pricing and promotional strategy, and field execution. The position is responsible for leading and driving the profitable growth of the merchandising categories up to and including designing and implementing the category management processes and approaches for driving sales and gross profit improvement leveraging our product portfolio. Proactively work cross-functionally, especially with Local Field Merchandising, Pricing, Branding, Supply Chain and Sales to identify, diagnose, and mitigate potential barriers to the execution of merchandising initiatives. The leadership role will also leave a team (also known as “Pods”) consisting of ~20 direct reports (per Pod) comprised of Directors, Sr. Managers/Managers, Sr. Sourcing Managers/Managers, Product Managers and Product Specialists.  Therefore, coaching, motivation, and development will be critical.  The Senior Director(s) will focus on maximizing profitability/revenue for a categories of consumer products they’re accountable for by developing strategies aligning manufacturer pricing, selection, and promotions for the category with the retailer’s role/profit margin for the category

RESPONSIBILITIES

Strategic Planning and Execution of Category Merchandising Strategies:

  • Develop and Lead strategic planning and execution across merchandising functions to drive high priority commercial initiatives as noted below. Maintain a dynamic portfolio of sales and GP$ (i.e. profits & losses) growth opportunities, proactively identifying, sizing, and prioritizing new initiatives as well as identifying risks & mitigation strategies to PGM and overall plan delivery.  Be accountable to P&L performance versus plan for a discrete portion of Sysco’s USBL business. Maintain a deep understanding of performance against key internal and external metrics to ensure visibility and profitable growth. Deliver goals in PGM, Assortment, Sustainability, and other key initiatives. Leads and promotes the Partnership Growth Management Process to supports sales and share growth while delivering leveraged gross profit growth. Collects and synthesizes insights from different sources (for example: supplier, market, NPD, etc.) to develop category strategies while also taking appropriate action to develop a relevant national, regional, and local assortment. Collaborates and aligns with Sourcing partners on the most effective sourcing approach

Broker (Category Producers/Suppliers) Sourcing & Performance Management:

  • Develop strategies to fully leverage third party sales teams (brokers, dedicated supplier reps) to execute Sysco’s assortment and growth strategies. In scope are all aspects of performance management including strategic broker network partner relationship management, measurement & metrics, goal setting & incentives, field sales & merchandising engagement and performance review processes. Support negotiations with suppliers. Engage merchandising and sales leadership to address issues and risks. Establish strong lines of cross-functional collaboration to create process alignment and enable appropriate resource allocation. Ensure effective field execution and utilize two-way communication best practices to identify and address process improvement opportunities. Promotes and champions suppliers to subscribe to Partnership Growth Insights to feed regular strategic planning meetings to measure share growth performance, identify and prioritize key gaps and execute center-led approaches for continuous improvement. Monitor NPD data and supplier service levels; prioritize action plans to drive results and a differentiated response for Sysco. Create an environment which fosters mutual market share growth, innovation, greater productivity, issue resolution in alignment with the field. Engage supplier broker networks for additional resources to enable field execution and training.

Gross Profit Recovery Strategy & Execution:

  • Define scope, investigate and prioritize Gross Profit recovery efforts for a defined group of opportunity levers, including supplier and customer agreements. The work includes the investigation, strategy development, resourcing, execution and delivery of benefit. Proactively identifying, sizing, and prioritizing new initiatives is a key part of this role. Strong cross-functional expertise will be required to effectively navigate between GSC Merchandising, Shared Business Services, National Sales, Business Technology & Finance teams. Analyze weekly/monthly finance reports to appraise case sales and gross profit performance utilizing internal and external analytic resources to conduct deep dives. Determine root causes and develop action plans to mitigate losses in share or negative trends; prepare executive summaries.

CMU Strategy & Execution:

  • Engage with key cross-functional stakeholders in Merchandising, Category Analytics, Sysco Brand, Trade Management and National Sales to facilitate national customers in purchasing a more common assortment in order to deliver annual growth and margin targets. Includes priority target identification, development of tools, approaches and playbooks to help enable successful conversion and penetration. Strong connectivity with Sysco Brand team will be required to develop a proactive approach to national customer assortment management. Assume an “activist” role in identifying, escalating, and addressing execution roadblocks and delays. Develops pricing strategy to drive market share and incremental profit opportunities while remaining market relevant.

  • Proactively engages with Revenue Management to identify pricing strategies that are driving share growth; aligns and executes measures to address pricing issues.

Team Management and Direct Report Development

  • Leads and develops the culture of an empowered team that is aligned to achieving goals through cross-functional and direct engagement.

  • Leverages the Sysco career development roadmap as a guide and coaches direct reports through their CMP and individual development plan (IDP).

  • Consistently embraces change, leads efforts to role model change and its benefits.

  • Creates an environment that welcomes regular, open two-way communication and acts upon feedback

Education Required:

Bachelor’s Degree in Business or related field preferred

Education Preferred:

Bachelor's degree or equivalent combination of education and experience in lieu of degree sufficient to successfully perform essential job functions required.

Experience Required:

Merchandising expertise in the operational/field setting.

9+ years management/professional experience required. Significant category management, merchandising and/or operations experience within a retail, wholesale or distribution environment preferred

Experience Preferred:

10+ years management/professional experience required. Significant category management, merchandising and/or operations experience within a retail, wholesale or distribution environment

Multi-functional field experience, GSC merchandising experience

P&L ownership

Technical Skills and Abilities:

Planning, Organizing, and Execution Skills

  • Possesses a deep understanding and demonstrated capability for strategic planning, process design, portfolio management, and execution

  • Ability to manage multiple projects in a fast-paced environment, adapting to shifting priorities and dynamic deadlines

  • Willingness to question antiquated or overly manual processes and identify opportunities to streamline and accelerate

  • Deep curiosity for the food business, which results in being an industry expert on the products in scope; includes understanding of innovation, key players, and trends

Communication

  • Strong communicator who can design impactful presentations to cross-functional teams, customers, suppliers and executive leadership

  • Demonstrates well-developed influencing skills with the ability to easily connect in a credible manner with field and headquarter leadership teams

  • Organizationally savvy and able to appropriately tailor messages and mediums, synchronize, socialize, and cascade communications

  • Able to establish credibility quickly with senior leaders in order to engage, push back, and encourage

  • Ability to build and maintain strong cross-functional relationships

  • Able to drive consensus among key stakeholders with diverse needs and interests

  • Ability to coach and mentor junior merchandising colleagues to be successful in their current and future roles

Analytics

  • Expert in business measurement definition and tracking (e.g. KPIs)

  • Possesses a strong general business acumen, including full Sysco P&L fluency and understanding of what levers can be impacted by Merchandising

  • Strong analytical and problem-solving skills; lets data drive action

Decision Making Authority – made fully independent

  • Identification and prioritization of merchandising process changes and improvements

  • Comfortable with ambiguity and willingness to make decisions

Decision Making Authority – made with review and approval

  • Identification and prioritization of Merchandising Strategic Initiatives

  • Cross-functional strategy development and execution

​Physical Demands:

Reasonable accommodations will be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions of this job.

  • The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job.  Reasonable accommodations will be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions of this job.

  • While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to sit, stand, walk and use hands and fingers to operate a computer keyboard, mouse, and telephone to talk and hear. The employee is frequently required to sit and reach with hands and arms. The employee must occasionally lift and/or move up to 20

  • pounds.

Work Environment:

Up to 50% travel may be required for this role.

#LI-AG1

Overview Sysco is the global leader in foodservice distribution. With over 71,000 colleagues and a fleet of over 13,000 vehicles, Sysco operates approximately 333 distribution facilities worldwide and serves more than 700,000 customer locations. We offer our colleagues the opportunity to grow personally and professionally, to contribute to the success of a dynamic organization, and to serve others in a manner that exceeds their expectations. We’re looking for talented, hard-working individuals to join our team. Come grow with us and let us show you why Sysco is at the heart of food and service.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION STATEMENT Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the United States. We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action employer, and consider qualified applicants without regard to race, color, creed, religion, ancestry, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, veteran status or any other protected factor under federal, state or local law. This opportunity is available through Sysco Corporation, its subsidiaries and affiliates.

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