Senior Manager Analytics

Job Description

We’re seeking an innovative and results-driven Senior Manager, Merchandising and Food Category Analytics to lead the development and implementation of reporting and advanced analytics solutions that support and optimize merchandising and category performance across our European retail network.

As a member of the Global Data & Analytics Team, you will lead a high-performing team of analysts and data scientists across multiple countries and timezones. You will work closely with Category Managers, European Merchandising teams, Food Service, Technology, and Operations teams to develop tools, dashboards, models, and insights that drive business impact.

To succeed in this role, you must combine a deep understanding of category analytics and merchandising with strong analytical expertise and a proven ability to lead teams, influence stakeholders, and deliver measurable outcomes and solutions that are fit to serve the organization’s prioritised initiatives. We are looking for an individual who is a proven problem solver with exceptional critical thinking ability. The candidate should have a high sense of curiosity and be comfortable with ambiguity when faced with a difficult challenge. This role will also require you to build strong relationships with stakeholders across North America, Europe and Asia, with some travel expected.

Type of Employment: Temporary for 1 year (Maternity leave cover)

Location: Oslo, Norway

Visa requirements: A valid work permit from the EU/EEA (relocation assistance is not provided)

RESPONSIBILITIES & ACCOUNTABILITIES

• Collaborate with business stakeholders and category teams to define business requirements, KPIs, and acceptance criteria for analytics initiatives. Act as a data-driven thought partner to Category teams, providing analytical support and challenging priorities based on insights.

• Develop, manage, and execute the analytics roadmap to support business objectives and drive performance across assigned merchandise categories.

• Serve as the data-driven partner for our operational leadership teams, category teams, and functional teams, supporting them in their priorities, but also challenge and prioritize based on data and insights you and your team uncover.

• Recruit, mentor, and lead a high-performing team, fostering a culture of continuous learning, innovation, and diversity. Provide guidance on career development, resource allocation, and recruitment for analytics talent.

• Lead the design, development, and deployment of initiatives spanning reporting and advanced analytics (e.g. forecasting, clustering, A/B tests, causal impact analysis etc.) to optimize category performance, competitor analysis and scale cross- category toolkits.

• Oversee the end-to-end analytics workflow- including data preprocessing, feature engineering, model training, validation, deployment, and evaluation.

• Partner with Technology and Operations teams to ensure robust data pipelines, scalable model deployment, and data-driven decision making. Enhance agility by proactively identifying and remediating data issues.

• Present actionable insights and recommendations to senior leadership to influence business strategies and continuously enhance the value generation from category analytics.

• Drive the evaluation of business experiments, including test design, measurement, and results interpretation to guide decision-making.

• Ensure delivery of scalable, repeatable tools and dashboards to support ongoing business needs in reporting and performance tracking.

• Stay current with emerging trends in category analytics, machine learning, and AI, driving process automation and operational improvements to modernize our approach to merchandising analytics

• Other duties as assigned.

QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE

• A higher degree in an analytical discipline such as Data Science, Applied Mathematics, Statistics, Engineering, or similar is preferred. Higher business degrees will also be considered.

• 7+ years of experience in data science and analytics, including 2+ years in a leadership role, ideally in a retail merchandising or category analytics context.

• Excellent English language skills for communication with colleagues in Europe.

• Excellent communication skills with stakeholders at all levels of the organization and in any geography.

• Proven ability to translate data, analytics, and AI/ML insights into actionable business strategies and outcomes, supported by a strong commercial mindset.

• Experience with analytical approaches such as exploratory data analysis, descriptive analytics, hypothesis testing, as well as Agil