Senior Director, Category Leadership – Central Large Store Retail

Senior Director, Category Leadership
- Central Large Store Retail

Jul 29, 2026

$218,800 - $247,200/year

Job Description

Summary:

At The Coca-Cola Company, growth starts with understanding the evolving customer and shopper landscape. Our ability to deliver value for retail partners in a dynamic marketplace depends on insights-driven strategies and the strength of our Category Leadership capabilities.

As Senior Director, Category Leadership
- Central Large Store Retail , you will lead a highly strategic portfolio of national and regional customers and oversee a team accountable for translating marketplace data and consumer trends into actionable growth strategies. This leadership role goes beyond execution-it combines strategic thinking, commercial agility, and organizational influence to shape customer partnerships that accelerate category performance and long-term profitability. You will partner closely across Sales, Bottlers, Customer Shopper Insights, Space Strategy, Commercial Strategy, and other enterprise teams to deliver solutions that unite customer priorities with Coca-Cola's growth objectives.

Travel expectation is approximately 30%

What You’ll Do for Us

• Lead and inspire a geographically dispersed Category Leadership organization, driving a culture of collaboration, curiosity, and customer focus.
• Recruit, develop, and elevate top talent while building capability in analytics, commercial strategy, and customer engagement.
• Provide leadership for direct reports, including leader-of-leaders responsibilities, ensuring accountability, succession planning, and ongoing development frameworks.
• Serve as the senior Category Leadership partner for a portfolio of Central Large Store retailers, shaping category growth strategies and delivering annual and multi-year planning recommendations.
• Build trusted relationships with senior retail decision makers and act as a thought partner to Sales leadership on both immediate and long-range planning.
• Translate customer, shopper, and marketplace insights into actionable frameworks, category blueprints, and growth recommendations tailored by priority account.
• Coordinate with Sales, Bottling partners, and Commercial teams to execute customer growth strategies integrated across enterprise capabilities.
• Balance near-term business imperatives with long-range category vision, aligning resources to unlock the highest-value opportunities for Coca-Cola and its retail partners.
• Collaborate with insights, space, digital commerce, revenue growth, and segmentation teams to deliver connected solutions grounded in shopper needs and performance analytics.
• Scale best practices and standardized methodologies for Category Leadership excellence across multiple accounts and the broader organization.
• Represent the customer voice to influence enterprise innovation, commercial planning, and growth strategies that reflect evolving retail dynamics.

Requirements & Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Marketing, Economics, Finance, or related field required; MBA preferred.
• 10+ years of progressive experience across Category Leadership, Category Management, Customer Sales, or Commercial Strategy roles within CPG or retail environments.
• Proven ability to lead diverse teams and build organizational capability through strong talent management practices and inclusive leadership behaviors.
• Exceptional strategic agility with experience linking long-range commercial priorities to actionable category programs.
• Expertise in interpreting complex analytics and distilling insights into recommendations that influence senior stakeholders and customer decision makers.
• Advanced proficiency with relevant platforms and tools, including space planning software, assortment solutions, MS Office, Power BI, and syndicated data sources (NielsenIQ, Circana).
• Experience managing relationships with customer-specific data platforms such as 84.51, dunnhumby, or similar resources.
• Skilled in customer engagement and negotiation with a proven record of delivering successful commercial outcomes through collaborative strategies.
• Demonstrated capability to lead through change, creating clarity and alignment around a shared vision while…