Director of Category Development - Blend360

Blend is a premier AI services provider, committed to co-creating meaningful impact for its clients through the power of data science, AI, technology, and people. With a mission to fuel bold visions, Blend tackles significant challenges by seamlessly aligning human expertise with artificial intelligence. The company is dedicated to unlocking value and fostering innovation for its clients by harnessing world-class people and data-driven strategy. We believe that the power of people and AI can have a meaningful impact on your world, creating more fulfilling work and projects for our people and clients. For more information, visit www.blend360.com  

We are seeking a Director of Category Development to contribute to our next level of growth and expansion. 

The goal of this role is to map, track and develop with commercial teams and business category opportunities, to better position the different businesses across multiple verticals and to improve competitive positioning.

• Identify new growth segments, build business plans, and close competitive gaps.
• Apply best tools and practices for continuous opportunity flow and optimal recommendations.
• Support business and commercial partners to prioritize and execute category opportunities.
• Provide insights on market and category trends, consumer behavior, and subchannel identification to drive growth and revenue opportunities.
• Collaborate with marketing and commercial teams to optimize positioning strategies and execution.

Key Responsibilities

• Diagnose opportunities, set strategic priorities with business leaders and stakeholders.
• Benchmark best practices, build processes and tools, align resources and budgets.
• Create a pipeline of market, category, and brand opportunities.
• Identify competitive positioning and operationalize benchmarks.
• Monitor category drivers, trends, and business fundamentals.
• Develop long-term market strategies with business leaders an track performance and identify new growth opportunities.
• Understand market structure and identify category roles.
• Analyze consumer needs and market trends for optimal targeting.
• Develop positioning tactics for brands and marketing programs.
• Collaborate on marketing mix strategies to enhance ROI.
• Build pipelines of opportunities with prioritized channels and customers.
• Extract value from key partner relationships and joint business plans.
• Monitor and diagnose category execution for actionable insights.
• Assess capabilities, benchmark practices, and identify process gaps.
• Integrate information databases and automate processes.

• Master’s degree in Marketing, Business, Economics, or related field with experience in the CPG industry with 5-8 years in category development and insights roles
• Expertise in syndicated, consumer, and other insight data sources (e.g., IRI Circana, Nielsen, Numerator).
• Experience in building intelligence and insights programs.

This role is not eligible for immigration sponsorship. 

The starting pay range for this role is $145,000 - $165,000. Actual compensation within the range will be dependent on several factors including but not limited to relevant experience, skills, certifications, training, and location. It is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range and determining factors for compensation are considered for each individual circumstance. Our client also offers a competitive benefits program to meet the health and financial well-being their team and their families. You can look forward to a range of benefits including medical, dental, PTO, paid holidays, 401k and more. 

A diverse workforce is a strong workforce.
To deliver growth at BLEND360 and for our clients, we believe we have a responsibility and unique opportunity to positively impact the workforce. Diversity has played a critical role in our history, our growth, and continues to have a profound impact on our success.  We are determined to have equality in the workplace, within our team and as an extension of our clients’ team.  

This is not the work of the moment, and this requires continued learning and purposeful actions.  We are investing resources to understand and improve the sourcing, selection, and retention of the talent we hire, and ultimately the workforce we provide for our clients. We will communicate our journey in the spirit of transparency and shared learning.  

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