Lead Analyst, Category Management Analytics

Lead Analyst, Merchandise Planning Analytics

The purpose of this role is data analysis/guided deliverable development in support of assessment/strategic deliverables.

Merkle's Commerce Analytics & Intelligence practice helps the world's largest retailers plan the business sales, inventory, margin, and flow with the precision that turns a plan into performance. We are moving from an embedded, staff-augmentation delivery model to a craft-led consultancy: named specialists organized by discipline, US-onshore leadership in front of a global delivery engine, and value measured by planning accuracy and financial outcomes rather than the hours we bill.

The Lead Analyst, Merchandise Planning Analytics is a US-based onshore craft leader accountable for the analytics behind a merchant's financial and merchandise plans on one of our largest enterprise accounts. You pair fluent business acumen with a strong technical foundation AI and machine learning, Python, SQL, and cloud computation and you use both to own the planning craft end to end: demand forecasting, sales and inventory planning, open-to-buy and allocation, markdown and margin optimization, and the reconciliation of top-down financial targets with bottom-up merchandise plans.

What you will own

• Planning partnership. Be the analytics voice in the merchant's planning process pre-season and in-season demand forecasting, sales/inventory/margin planning, open-to-buy, allocation and replenishment logic, and markdown/promotion optimization.
• The craft. Own merchandise planning analytics across the account: forecasting models, financial and unit planning, allocation and flow, margin and markdown analytics, and the data products that keep plan versus actual honest and actionable.
• A blended pod. Lead a flat, project-based team from a single global Merkle pool onshore planning specialists in front, offshore engineering and data-science engines behind. Assemble teams around projects, not titles.
• Plans you can prove. Run a value cadence tied to planning outcomes: forecast accuracy, plan-versus-actual, inventory productivity, and margin realized baselines stated honestly, targets met, tied to the merchant's planning and business-review calendar.
• Growth. Convert planning accuracy and margin wins into expanded scope more categories, deeper into allocation and pricing feeding the account's forward pipeline with account and client-success leadership.

What you will bring

• Fluent business acumen. You read a P&L and a merchant's world with equal ease you move between the four Ps and the levers behind them (traffic, transaction, units, conversion, margin), translate a business question into an analytical answer and back, and hold your own in a boardroom, not just a data review.
• Strong technical background. Deep, hands-credible expertise across the modern analytics and AI stack AI and machine learning, Python, SQL, and cloud computation (e.g., GCP, AWS, or Azure and their data/ML services) plus fluency in the market-leading tooling of the moment: LLMs and agentic/GenAI, semantic and decisioning layers, experimentation and attribution platforms, and modern BI. You do not have to be the builder on every project, but you must be credible enough to architect, challenge, and lead engineers and data scientists.
• 4 + years in merchandise planning, category management, or inventory/financial planning analytics, with real depth in forecasting methods, open-to-buy, cost and vendor negotiation, and markdown/margin optimization having sat inside or directly alongside a merchant's planning process, not just reporting on it.
• Planning-cycle fluency. You know the rhythm of pre-season and in-season planning, how top-down financial targets reconcile with bottom-up unit plans, and how forecasting, allocation, and markdown decisions move margin and inventory.
• Consulting and client leadership. You have led senior client relationships as a trusted advisor, set the analytical standard, and navigated a large, matrixed retail organization comfortable proposing the path rather than executing a spec.
• Onshore/offshore delivery leadership. You have led blended teams across time zones and shores, translated business intent into a technical plan, and held delivery quality and dates without a heavy management layer beneath you.
• A build-and-shepherd temperament. You set standards, raise risks early, escalate rather than absorb, and grow people by the work they lead not by title.

What sets the strongest candidates apart

• Direct experience inside a big-box or enterprise retailer's merchandise or financial planning organization.
• Experience building demand-forecasting or allocation models and taking them from analysis to a governed, repeatable capability.
• A track record of turning planning analytics from a reporting service into a decision-driving partnership and growing it.

How this role fits

This Lead Analyst sits within Merkle's DBT-aligned Commerce Analytics practice, reporting into practice leadership, with account P&L owned above the role. You lead your craft for the account and draw talent from and contribute talent to the shared global pool that serves Merkle's broader commerce portfolio. Success is a client who sees Merkle as their commerce-intelligence partner, a craft that delivers on a promise made and measured, and a team that grows because the work does.