Senior Team Lead Category

About the Role

The Global Category Manager Lead is a senior strategic role within Emma's Global Category Product Management team. You are the long-term owner of one of Emma's core product categories - Mattresses or Accessories/Beds/Linen - and are responsible for defining where the category should play and how it should win at a global level.

This is a high-impact, cross-functional role that connects consumer insight, market intelligence, and business priorities into a coherent portfolio architecture, innovation pipeline, and multi-year product roadmap. You work hand-in-hand with R&D, Marketing, Finance, and regional teams to ensure Emma builds the right products, at the right price, for the right consumers - consistently and globally.

In a context where Emma is rebuilding its category strategy foundations and closing critical gaps in portfolio steering, pricing logic, and product truth, this role is central to delivering the transformation.

What you'll do:

Category strategy

• Define and evolve the global category vision and 3-year ambition
• Decide what the category is for, who it serves, and how it grows - across segments, geographies, and channels
• Translate company strategy into concrete category direction
• Align strategy with senior stakeholders, up to C-level

Portfolio ownership

• Design the Good/Better/Best architecture: SKU roles, lifecycle stages, trade-up paths
• Build and maintain a Y1-Y3+ product roadmap
• Run quarterly portfolio reviews to spot winners, slow-movers, gaps, and overlaps
• Drive SKU rationalisation with Commercial and Finance
• Keep the product catalogue as the single source of truth

Innovation, close to R&D

• Lead product discovery: market gaps, Jobs-to-Be-Done, opportunity sizing
• Write innovation briefs with clear consumer and commercial rationale
• Partner directly with R&D and engineering through design and build - not just at handoff
• Track competitor launches and tech trends to inform the pipeline
• Maintain a 12-18 month innovation pipeline with clear stage-gate milestones

Product truth & marketing foundations

• Define value propositions and reasons to believe
• Set positioning and trade-up messaging
• Set naming conventions and the portfolio story
• Set claim guardrails and messaging architecture for regional teams
• Produce a launch product truth doc for every new release

Pricing

• Set global pricing principles and value guardrails
• Validate price ladders and trade-up logic with the Performance & Value Manager
• Keep pricing coherent across SKUs, markets, and channels
• Flag pricing risks early, with recommendations

Global-regional collaboration

• Act as the global point of contact for EU, APAC, and LATAM teams
• Provide portfolio guardrails, launch guidance, and product truth to regional managers
• Run quarterly global-regional alignment sessions
• Feed regional insight and competitive signals into global decisions
• Keep regional adaptations within global coherence boundaries

Who we are looking for:

• 7-10 years in Category Management, Product Management, or Portfolio Strategy in consumer goods, e-commerce, or DTC
• A track record managing complex, multi-SKU portfolios (mattress, furniture, home, FMCG, or similar)
• Real experience taking products from brief to launch alongside R&D - this is core to the role, not a nice-to-have
• Comfort operating across global/multi-regional models
• A strategic thinker who can turn ambiguity into direction, then execute it
• Someone who's built a category roadmap from scratch, not just maintained one
• Strong with data, business cases, and consumer research
• A confident communicator who can align senior stakeholders across functions
• DTC, online-first, or omnichannel experience is a plus

What we offer:

• A culture of freedom, impact, and zero politics - full ownership from day one
• Pet-friendly office
• Discounts on Emma products
• Health insurance, including dental
• 24 days holiday/year, +1 per year at Emma (up to 29 days max)
• Multinational teams