Market Strategy & Planning Director

QLM is partnered with a high-profile, growing food manufacturing business looking to appoint a Market Strategy & Planning Director into a newly created leadership role.

This is a genuine opportunity to shape how a large, fast-paced and complex organisation approaches market strategy, category growth, consumer insight and commercial planning.

The successful individual will have the opportunity to build the frameworks, disciplines and ways of working that connect insight, strategy and execution across the wider commercial organisation.

Sitting within the Commercial Leadership Team, the role will bring together Strategy, Category Development, Consumer & Innovation Insights and Sales Enablement, working closely with Sales, Marketing, Revenue Management, Product Development, Finance and Operations.

The successful individual will:

• Lead the development of the category and commercial strategy across the business, identifying where to play, how to win and where future growth will come from
• Turn consumer, customer and market insight into clear commercial opportunities, ensuring insight genuinely influences decisions rather than simply producing another presentation
• Connect category opportunities with the innovation and product development pipeline, helping prioritise where the business should invest its time and resources
• Build a more consistent commercial planning and operating model, creating common tools, routines and frameworks across a complex organisation
• Develop clear go-to-market plans, customer narratives and selling stories, ensuring strategy translates into practical commercial execution
• Identify underperforming categories, channels or customers and bring the right teams together to drive corrective action across mix, pricing, assortment and route-to-market

We are looking for a senior Commercial Strategy, Category, Insights or Market Planning leader who has operated within a large, complex food manufacturing or FMCG environment.

You will need to be comfortable moving between long-term strategy and immediate commercial priorities, influencing senior stakeholders while remaining close enough to the business to make things happen.

This role will suit someone who:

• Has built or significantly evolved category, commercial strategy or planning capability
• Can turn large amounts of market and consumer information into clear business decisions
• Is comfortable influencing across a matrix organisation
• Understands how Category, Sales, Marketing, Innovation and Operations need to work together
• Brings pace, judgement and commercial curiosity to a business that is continuing to grow and evolve
• Can communicate clearly with senior leaders while remaining practical and execution focused