Head of Category Marketing

The Head of Category Marketing is responsible for driving marketing-led growth across ASTRO's key product categories: FMCG, Fresh, and Frozen.

This role goes beyond managing promotions and in-app campaigns. It owns the category marketing strategy by combining buyer insights, category dynamics, data, competitive intelligence, and commercial priorities to identify growth opportunities and translate them into stronger category propositions and go-to-market plans.

The role will be accountable for improving category penetration, buyer growth, Goods Value (Revenue), repeat purchase, and the effectiveness of promotional investments.

Responsibilities:

• Define the growth strategy for ASTRO's key categories, identifying the biggest opportunities to increase buyer penetration, trial, conversion, purchase frequency, repeat, and Goods Value.
• Develop deep buyer and category understanding by combining buyer behavior, transaction data, research, market trends, competitive activity, and category-specific insights to uncover growth opportunities and barriers.
• Translate insights into category-specific go-to-market strategies, including proposition, messaging, assortment storytelling, merchandising priorities, promotional mechanics, and buyer activation plans across relevant channels.
• Own the category marketing calendar and growth initiatives, ensuring campaigns and promotions address clear business or customer opportunities rather than operating as standalone tactical activities.
• Optimize promotional investment and effectiveness, with accountability for promotion spend utilization, incremental impact, ROI, and continuous improvement of promotional mechanics.
• Partner closely with Growth, CRM, Brand, Creative, Social Media, Campaign Operations, Commercial, Merchandising, Ad Solutions, Product, Data, and Supply Chain teams to turn category strategies into coordinated and well-executed buyer experiences.
• Lead and develop the Category Marketing team, establishing strong strategic thinking, analytical rigor, execution standards, performance management, and clear accountability against category growth objectives.

Must-Have Requirements:

1. 8+ years of relevant experience in category marketing, consumer / brand marketing, growth marketing, trade marketing, or related roles within consumer-facing businesses (B2C, D2C, B2B2C)
2. Track record of developing marketing strategies that translate consumer or shopper insights into measurable commercial growth.
3. Understanding of the customer funnel, particularly how to drive trial, conversion, purchase frequency, repeat, and category penetration.
4. Highly analytical and commercially minded, with the ability to work confidently with customer data, category performance, financial metrics, promotional economics, and ROI.
5. Cross-functional leadership skills, with experience influencing and working closely with at least 3 of these teams (Growth, CRM, Brand, Creative, Social Media, Campaign Operations, Commercial, Merchandising, Ad Solutions, Product, Data, and Supply Chain)
6. Have led at least 3 full-time employees as direct reports and have experience setting clear targets and priorities and coaching/training talent
7. Comfortable operating in a fast-moving, high-growth environment where priorities evolve quickly and decisions need to be made with imperfect information.

Nice-to-Have / Bonus Points:

1. Experience in e-commerce, quick-commerce, grocery, FMCG, retail, marketplaces, or other high-frequency consumer businesses.
2. Experience managing categories such as FMCG Food, FMCG Non-Food, Fresh, Frozen, grocery, or adjacent consumer categories.
3. Direct experience managing multiple product categories with different customer missions, purchase behaviors, economics, and growth challenges.
4. Experience with category management, shopper marketing, revenue growth management, pricing, promotions, or assortment strategy.
5. Strong familiarity with experimentation and measurement approaches, including incrementality, A/B testing, cohort analysis, customer segmentation, and promotional effectiveness.
6. Experience working with large-scale transactional or behavioral customer datasets and converting analysis into actionable growth strategies.
7. Strong communication and stakeholder-management skills, with the ability to simplify complex insights and build alignment around clear strategic choices.