Category Manager – North America
Meet Our Recruiter
Jamie Pickup
About the Role
We have been retained by an international ingredients manufacturer to appoint a Category Manager for its North American business.
This newly created role will take ownership of a premium portfolio spanning fruit and vegetable extracts, tea extracts and solutions, and sugar reduction solutions.
Sitting at the intersection of sales, innovation, manufacturing and commercial strategy, you will become the primary category management resource in North America. You will help shape the portfolio, support customer opportunities and ensure technical product knowledge is translated into commercially relevant solutions.
This is an excellent opportunity for someone who enjoys combining technical understanding with commercial thinking and wants visible influence across a growing international business.
The role
Reporting to the UK-based Head of Category, you will work closely with sales, innovation, marketing, manufacturing, procurement and finance teams across the US and UK.
Your responsibilities will include:
- Owning and developing category strategies across extracts and essences, tea, and sugar reduction
- Managing the full product lifecycle, from new product introduction through to expansion, rationalization or removal
- Monitoring portfolio sales, revenue, margin and contribution, recommending actions to improve performance
- Supporting pricing strategy, market positioning and category value propositions
- Using customer trends, market insight and competitive intelligence to identify growth opportunities
- Acting as the product and category expert for the North American sales team
- Joining customer meetings, presentations and business reviews alongside sales colleagues
- Translating technical product information and applications into practical commercial solutions
- Collaborating with innovation and R&D teams to progress new product launches
- Aligning regional priorities with the wider global category strategy
- Preparing category performance updates and recommendations for senior stakeholders
The position does not carry direct account ownership or people management responsibility, but it will play a central role in customer engagement, opportunity development and profitable growth.
About you
We are interested in speaking with candidates from category management, product management, technical sales, business development, applications, R&D or technical services backgrounds.
You will ideally bring:
- Experience within food ingredients, flavors, functional ingredients, beverages, specialty chemicals or a closely related B2B manufacturing sector
- A strong commercial mindset and the ability to support customer-facing sales activity
- A technical or scientific foundation, gained through education or relevant industry experience
- The ability to understand product applications and communicate technical information clearly
- Experience using sales, financial and market data to inform commercial decisions
- Strong communication and presentation skills
- The confidence to influence across teams and regions without direct authority
- A proactive, curious and self-directed approach
- A bachelor’s degree in food science, chemistry, biology, business, marketing or a related discipline, or equivalent professional experience
Experience with extracts, beverage ingredients or sugar reduction solutions would be particularly valuable, although deep knowledge of every category is not essential from day one.
Candidates must be willing to travel up to approximately 40%, primarily within North America, with occasional international travel.
If your experience could be relevant and you would be open to an exploratory conversation, please apply or contact Paragon Talent directly for further information.