Senior Regional Merchandising Manager

Job Summary

The Senior Regional Merchandising Manager (Senior RMM) serves as a regional merchandising liaison and strategic connector between Operations leadership and Support Center teams. The role is responsible for synthesizing regional customer needs, store-level execution realities, competitive activity, and performance opportunities into structured recommendations, strategy frameworks, and decision-support materials for central review and prioritization. The Senior RMM leads cross-functional alignment across field leadership, merchants, category teams, space planning, finance, segmentation, supply chain, and supplier partners to support execution of centrally approved category, assortment, pricing, promotional, segmentation, display, and vendor strategies.

This role is based in our Deerfield, IL office and is on‑site four days a week.

Job Responsibilities

• Develops strategy to drive regional assortment planning by understanding customer needs and current financial performance. Shares customer segment’s data, insights and opportunities to develop collaborative solutions with key stakeholders in Merchandising, Marketing, Supply Chain and Store Operations.
• Responsible for analyzing reports to identify regional category sales gaps (vs corporate performance) and building regional plans to drive volume in these opportunistic categories. Serve as the liaison between corporate and regional operations. Responsible for all local pricing and marketing as established by corporate guidance. Collaborates with Localization team to drive synergies and create efficiencies.
• Accountability for regional subject matter expertise associated with each format. Ensures consistent and seamless merchandising execution within each format.
• Focuses significant time and effort developing programs and managing all aspects of regional vendors including negotiation of all promotions and funding. Develops regional vendor budget targets and service level expectations based on corporate growth targets.
• Obtains lowest cost of goods on all local products bought and sold into the region. May create advertising opportunities in the region through negotiations with vendors. Engages with top eight national vendors on a monthly basis to drive DSD category sales year over year and to align with corporate growth plans.
• Works closely with Merchandising management and regional leadership in establishing goals and objectives for each region. Responsible for achieving the budgeted market sales and profit goals for front end for the region. Provides business cases, reporting and score-carding to ensure decisions are fact-based for all regional activities. Executes national programs on a regional level.
• Serves as Operations/Local Merchandising’s first point of contact for assigned categories. Category responsibility may range from developing category strategy and managing category/region P&L to executing corporately developed plans.
• Score-carding regional program performance to determine viability for discontinuance or expansion for key local items. Determines if regional items have net profitability and ROI. For items with national expansion or planogrammed opportunities, the Sr. RMM uses the scorecard process to present recommendations to the Subject Matter Expert and Corporate category teams to be considered in accordance with reset/revision guidelines and timing.
• Responsible for negotiating with internal and external service providers (distributors) to secure resources and acceptable service level agreements. Manages opportunities where vendors are engaged for grand openings and closings.
• Assists Retail Pricing Coordinator to ensure effective management of regional vendors through catalog/pricing maintenance and the capture of all regional promotions and deals.
• Works closely with the business unit DMM’s to communicate local mix and programs associated with driving sales in all markets. Manages regional pricing as applicable based on corporate category parameters and guardrails.
• Partners with various teams to ensure successful outcomes. Partners with Regional leadership to develop and create regional Charitable Giving strategy. Partners with Supply Chain to plan, identify and correct inventory needs and opportunities. Responsible for maintaining an accurate recap of significant regional events which impact inventory needs. Partners and collaborates with regional cross-functional team which includes Finance, Asset Protection, Human Resources, and Facilities Management to drive region sales and profitability.
• Drives regional assortment planning/buying and regional sales. Expands programs and refines the mix to match the needs of the consumer.
• Coaches, mentors and develops pool of talent from the field to be knowledgeable in product mix, assortment profitability, advertising and selling to their regional customers.
• Performs competitive store visits to understanding assortment, pricing, promotional and vendor opportunities.
• Serves as Brand Ambassadors for the WAG brand, communicating brand standards to internal and external partners. Ensures merchandising beliefs are consistently applied, brand guidelines are being upheld and corporate marketing programs are executed with excellence.

About Walgreens

Founded in 1901, Walgreens ( proudly serves nearly 9 million customers and patients each day across its approximately 8,500 stores throughout the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Walgreens has approximately 220,000 team members, including nearly 90,000 healthcare service providers, and is committed to being the first choice for pharmacy, retail and health services, building trusted relationships that create healthier futures for customers, patients, team members and communities.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree and at least 4 years of experience in buying and/or merchandising functions such as assortment planning, space management, pricing, promotions, purchasing, or vendor negotiations OR experience in District leadership in the field or a High School Diploma/GED and at least 7 years of experience in buying and/or merchandising functions such as assortment planning, space management, pricing, promotions, purchasing, or vendor negotiations OR experience in District leadership in the field.
• Experience as Category Manager, Buyer, District Manager, or Community Leader
• Knowledge of retail pricing, promotional planning/execution along with vendor negotiations.
• Knowledge of the local market and customer demographics.
• At least 2 years of experience contributing to financial decisions in the workplace.
• At least 2 years of direct leadership, indirect leadership and/or cross-functional team leadership.
• Willing to travel up to/at least 50% of the time for business purposes (within state and out of state).

Preferred Qualifications

• MBA or Master’s degree.
• Experience in a combination of buying, operations, merchandising, category management, customer/market planning, segmentation, or store strategy.
• CPG, DSD, local supplier, or category management experience.
• Intermediate Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and reporting/scorecarding skills.
• Advanced executive communication skills, including concise recommendation writing, decision framing, facilitation, and fact-based storytelling.

We will consider employment of qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

The Salary below is being provided to promote pay transparency and equal employment opportunities at Walgreens. The actual hourly salary within this range that you will be offered will depend on a variety of factors including geography, skills and abilities, education, experience and other relevant factors. This role will remain open until filled. To review benefits, please click here jobs.walgreens.com/benefits. If you are applying on a job board or unable to click on the link, please copy and paste this URL into your browser jobs.walgreens.com/benefits
Salary Range: $115400 - $196200 / Salaried