Category Director, Walmart

Job Description:

The Walmart Category Director leads Mars Pet Nutrition's Walmart Category Leadership organization and serves as the strategic owner of the relationship between Mars category capabilities and Walmart Merchandising. This role is responsible for making Mars the #1 trusted category partner to Walmart by transforming pet parent, shopper, category, and omnichannel insights into objective, retailer-facing growth strategies that help Walmart win in Total Pet while driving sustainable category growth for Mars.

As a key leader within the Category Leadership team, this role advances a ONE Category Management operating model , ensuring alignment between customer category strategies, insights, and commercial activation while maintaining all Walmart and Mars category-sales firewall requirements.

This role is based in Bentonville, AR, with regular in-office collaboration expected given the strategic partnership with Walmart. Flexibility is a key enabler, empowering Associates to make choices that support both business outcomes and personal needs, including occasional remote work.

What will be your key responsibilities?

• Lead the development of Walmart's Total Pet category vision, creating retailer-facing growth stories and strategic recommendations that drive category expansion, household penetration, shopper retention, and loyalty.
• Define the "perfect store" and "perfect digital shelf" for Walmart's pet business, integrating physical shelf execution, digital content, search, conversion, and omnichannel shopping missions.
• Establish category frameworks for assortment, modulars, shelving, fixtures, adjacencies, merchandising, and department design that support long-term category growth and retailer objectives.
• Ensure category strategies reflect both in-store productivity requirements and evolving omnichannel dynamics, including Walmart.com, pickup and delivery missions, digital discoverability, content quality, online leakage opportunities, and conversion optimization.
• Partner with Category Leadership and customer teams to support a ONE Category Management operating model while creating scalable processes, automation, and efficiencies that increase strategic capacity across the organization.
• Collaborate with Sales, Shopper Insights, Digital Commerce, Analytics, Marketing, SRM, Supply Chain, Customer Development, and Finance teams to ensure integrated category and customer growth strategies.
• Own the development and execution of Walmart-specific category toolkits, insights platforms, growth strategies, modular recommendations, and omnichannel category solutions that support customer engagement and planning.
• Leverage advanced analytics, automation, and space planning technologies to improve the speed, consistency, scalability, and quality of category recommendations and modular execution.
• Lead Walmart's category learning agenda, translating Scintilla, Nielsen/Circana, panel, shopper, tender, digital, and retailer data into actionable customer insights, growth opportunities, and strategic learning plans.
• Deliver bold, differentiated recommendations on shelving, assortment, fixtures, category adjacencies, merchandising, and the future evolution of Walmart's Total Pet department.
• Define best-practice frameworks for digital category execution, including taxonomy, content quality, search optimization, ratings and reviews, item availability, discoverability, and conversion drivers.
• Integrate insights, analytics, and test-and-learn approaches into category strategy while connecting physical and digital shopper journeys to drive measurable business results.
• Contribute category expertise to Walmart Joint Business Planning (JBP), annual business reviews, top-to-top meetings, account planning, and long-range strategy initiatives.
• Defend and expand Mars' category advisorship opportunities across Total Pet, Cat Treats, Digital Shelf, fixture strategy, and future strategic growth areas within Walmart.
• Influence senior internal stakeholders and Walmart decision-makers through objective category recommendations, strategic thinking, customer-first logic, and actionable business plans.
• Lead, coach, and develop a high-performing Walmart Category team by clarifying priorities, developing capabilities, driving accountability, and establishing standards of category excellence.

What are we looking for?

• Bachelor's Degree required.
• 10+ years of experience in Category Management, Category Leadership, Shopper Insights, Sales Strategy, Retail Strategy, or related CPG leadership roles.
• Deep expertise in category management, retailer advisorship, shopper insights, omnichannel strategy, space planning, assortment strategy, and category growth planning.
• Demonstrated success translating complex data and shopper insights into retailer-facing category growth strategies that influence customer decisions and drive commercial outcomes.
• Experience leading category organizations and high-performing teams within highly matrixed environments.
• Strong understanding of Walmart merchandising processes, omnichannel retailing, digital shelf dynamics, modular planning, and category growth strategy.
• Proven ability to influence senior internal stakeholders and retailer partners through strategic recommendations, executive storytelling, and customer-centric thinking.
• Advanced analytical capabilities with experience leveraging Scintilla, Nielsen, Circana, panel data, digital analytics, and emerging category technologies.
• Experience leading large-scale modular, assortment, shelving, merchandising, and category optimization initiatives.
• Strong leadership, communication, collaboration, and stakeholder management skills with the ability to drive alignment across cross-functional teams.
• Experience developing strategic learning agendas, synthesizing multiple data sources, identifying white-space opportunities, and converting insights into action.
• Demonstrated capability in building and scaling high-performing teams while leveraging automation and process improvements to drive organizational effectiveness.

What can you expect from Mars?

• Work with diverse and talented Associates
• Join a purpose-driven company
• A strong focus on learning and development
• Competitive compensation and benefits package
• Opportunity to shape the future of Walmart's Total Pet category strategy and omnichannel growth agenda
• Influence one of Mars Pet Nutrition's most strategic customer partnerships through category thought leadership and innovation