YF
Head of Category
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About YF
Our goal is to drive innovation in FMCG.
We work with consumer brands on a journey to mainstream success, providing advisory and support services to help them scale. We also partner with retailers to make it easier for them to identify and get behind high potential brands. By supporting both sides, we can drive the flywheel of progress.
Our FMCG brand services span Supply Chain, Sales & Commercial, Recruitment and more.
About the Role
The Head of Category is responsible for leading YF's category capability, ensuring every piece of category work delivered to clients is commercially robust, insight-led and actionable, and meets YF standards.
Reporting into the Managing Director, this role owns the delivery of YF's category strategy projects, working directly with FMCG founders and leadership teams to unlock growth opportunities through market insight, shopper understanding and retailer strategy.
You will personally lead high-value strategic projects while overseeing the delivery of wider category briefs through YF's network of specialist Category Consultants, ensuring every project is delivered to the highest standard.
Alongside client delivery, you will own YF's use of Circana Total Market data, combining it with wider market intelligence to create category thought leadership that elevates public information into commercially actionable insight. Your role is not simply to report the market, but to interpret it, identify what matters and help challenger brands make better strategic decisions.
This is a hands-on role for someone who combines excellent category thinking with commercial pragmatism and enjoys translating data into stories that influence both retailers and brands.
We don't believe data creates competitive advantage. Interpretation does. This role exists to turn information into commercial advantage for challenger brands.
Responsibilities
As a key member of the team, you will be responsible for:
- Leading the delivery of category strategy projects across retained clients and consultancy briefs, ensuring every recommendation is commercially relevant, practical and evidence-based.
- Personally delivering strategic category programmes for high-value or complex client projects while allocating suitable work to YF's network of Category Consultants, leveraging AI where applicable, and overseeing quality throughout delivery.
- Acting as the category lead for client engagements, helping founders identify growth opportunities through category strategy, shopper insight, market trends, innovation assessment, ranging, pricing and merchandising.
- Owning YF's use of Circana Total Market data, identifying emerging trends, market opportunities and retailer performance to support both client work and YF's wider commercial strategy.
- Producing regular YF-branded thought leadership and case studies using Circana Total Market data and wider publicly available market information, elevating public data into commercially meaningful insight that helps challenger brands understand what is changing, why it matters and what actions to take.
- Acting as YF's market intelligence lead, synthesising Circana insight with retailer announcements, industry publications, consumer research, macroeconomic trends and wider market intelligence to provide context that cannot be gained from any single data source.
- Owning the development of YF's category intellectual property, creating repeatable insight frameworks, playbooks, category toolkits and market reports that differentiate YF as the leading category insight partner for challenger brands.
- Working closely with the Marketing team to develop category content including reports, articles, webinars, presentations, LinkedIn content and retailer insight pieces that educate, inspire and engage the challenger marketplace.
- Supporting the Commercial team by developing insight-led sales materials, retailer stories and category evidence that strengthens proposals, supports client conversations and converts new business opportunities.
- Developing and continuously improving YF's category methodologies, templates and frameworks to ensure consistency, quality and scalability across every client engagement.
- Coaching and supporting YF's Category Consultants, providing clear briefs, constructive feedback and quality assurance to maintain exceptional delivery standards.
- Building strong relationships with Circana to maximise the value of YF's data assets and identify new opportunities for innovation.
- Working collaboratively across Commercial, Marketing and other YF service lines to ensure clients receive integrated, commercially impactful support.
- Ensuring YF's category expertise is consistently translated into commercially valuable assets that support client delivery, strengthen marketing activity, enable the Commercial team and reinforce YF's reputation as the UK's leading challenger FMCG consultancy.
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As You Develop in This Role
You will have the opportunity to shape YF's long-term category capability, expanding our thought leadership programme, developing new category propositions, creating proprietary category frameworks and helping define how challenger brands use insight to accelerate sustainable growth.
About You
You are an experienced Category Manager, Category Controller or Category Consultant with significant FMCG experience and a strong understanding of how category strategy drives commercial success.
- You have deep knowledge of UK grocery retail, category management principles and how retailers make ranging, merchandising and investment decisions.
- You are highly analytical and enjoy transforming complex market data into clear commercial recommendations and compelling stories.
- You naturally connect multiple sources of information, spotting patterns, trends and opportunities that others miss.
- You are comfortable presenting insight to founders, commercial leaders and retailers, adapting your style to suit different audiences.
- You are curious, commercially minded and passionate about helping challenger brands compete more effectively.
- You are organised, collaborative and capable of managing multiple client projects simultaneously while maintaining exceptional quality standards.
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We Are Likely to Be a Strong Fit If You Have
- Significant FMCG Category Management, Category Development or Category Consultancy experience.
- Strong experience using Circana, NielsenIQ, loyalty platforms or equivalent market data platforms.
- Excellent understanding of category strategy, shopper insight and retail execution.
- Experience delivering strategic recommendations to commercial teams and senior stakeholders.
- Strong presentation, storytelling and thought leadership skills.
- Experience creating commercially focused insight content.
- Excellent project management and stakeholder management capability.
- The ability to balance strategic thinking with hands-on delivery in a fast-moving entrepreneurial environment.
What's in It for You
As Head of Category at YF, you will play a major role in shaping one of the most important parts of the business.
You will have real ownership over a growing capability, the opportunity to build YF's category proposition, and the platform to make a meaningful impact on the success of high-potential consumer brands in the UK.
You will join a team that cares deeply about quality, relationships and results, and that is committed to building better ways of supporting innovation in FMCG.
Benefits
- A competitive salary
- Healthcare cash plan
- 25 days holiday + bank holidays and 1 extra day each year after 2 years of service
- A 'work from anywhere week' each quarter
- Enhanced parental leave
- Workplace Nursery Scheme
- Paid training & development including access to More Happi coaching software
- 2 volunteering days a year
- Cycle to work scheme
- Weekly drinks, monthly team lunches, quarterly socials, half year offsite and more
- Access to FMCG industry trade shows & events with a focus on all things innovation
- All the food & drink snacks you can get your hands on!
Location & Setup
- Office: Old Street, London, EC1V 9EE
- Full-time role with minimum 3 days per week in the office, though we are open to part-time and flexible working arrangements for the right person
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