Sr. Category Strategy Manager, Functional Beverage

Senior Category Strategy Manager – Functional Beverages
Glanbia Health & Nutrition

 

Company Overview:

Glanbia is a better nutrition company, home to consumer brands and ingredients that help people around the world feel strong, nourished, and to perform well at any age. Our global ingredient solutions business creates better, healthier and smarter nutritional and functional ingredients for healthy lifestyles.  Our unique technologies and experience in taste development with food, nutrition and beverage applications meets the evolving consumer need for greater transparency without sacrificing taste.

 

Role Summary

The Senior Category Strategy Manager – Functional Beverages is a senior strategic leader responsible for shaping the long-term category vision, competitive positioning, and growth agenda for functional beverages across energy, hydration, protein, and wellness platforms. This role elevates Glanbia’s category leadership by driving advanced insights, translating global market signals into revenue-generating strategies, and enabling senior commercial and product leaders to make informed portfolio and customer decisions.

 

As the Category Strategy Manager, you will influence premix prioritization, lead cross-functional strategy councils, and serve as a key thought partner to executive stakeholders. The role requires deep functional beverage expertise, exceptional analytical rigor, and the ability to convert complex data into clear strategic narratives that shape Glanbia's commercial direction.

 

 

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the premix functional beverages category strategy, setting the long-term vision, market positioning, and strategic choices across priority platforms.
• Own annual and multi-year category roadmaps; provide direction to Product, R&D, Marketing, and Commercial leadership on innovation, renovation, and whitespace opportunities.
• Serve as the senior insights authority for functional beverages, shaping the organization’s POV on consumer, customer, and competitive dynamics using syndicated, panel, POS, and primary data.
• Partner with commercial leaders to shape customer growth strategies, influence joint business plans, and guide mix and margin improvement initiatives.
• Lead high-impact cross-functional working groups to prioritize investment, allocate resources, and evaluate emerging technologies, ingredient trends, and regulatory considerations.
• Build advanced commercial toolkits, including executive-ready category narratives, customer selling stories, future-state scenarios, and portfolio growth frameworks.
• Oversee development of dashboards and reporting cadences; mentor analysts and managers in category analytics, story development, and forecasting.
• Represent Glanbia as a category expert in customer meetings, industry forums, supplier summits, and executive reviews.
• Influence and coach stakeholders across R&D, Finance, Product, and Sales to drive alignment against category priorities and operating plans.
• Champion responsible growth aligned with claims, nutrition standards, regulatory readiness, and corporate sustainability goals.

 

Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree required; MBA or advanced degree preferred.
• 8+ years of experience in category strategy, category management, product strategy, brand strategy, or commercial insights within CPG or beverages.
• Expertise in functional beverage trends, nutritional ingredients, and consumer health/wellness behaviors.
• Advanced financial acumen with experience shaping portfolio P&L outcomes, pricing, pack architecture, and strategic business cases.

Preferred skills:

• Proven ability to influence senior executives through data-driven storytelling, strategic frameworks, and compelling recommendations
• Track record of leading large cross-functional initiatives and driving strategic alignment across matrixed organizations.
• Exceptional communication skills, including executive presentation development and high-level industry POV creation.
• Experience mentoring or managing analysts or cross-functional peers.

 

Working Model & Travel

Hybrid with approximately 15–25% travel to customer sites, Glanbia offices, supplier visits, and industry events. 

 

 

About Glanbia  

Glanbia is a better nutrition company with three divisions: Performance Nutrition, Health & Nutrition and Dairy Nutrition. Collectively and with our partners we offer an incredible breadth of expertise in nutrition. We employ a team of 5800 people, work with global food and