Assistant Category Manager

At CVS Health, we’re building a world of health around every consumer and surrounding ourselves with dedicated colleagues who are passionate about transforming health care.

As the nation’s leading health solutions company, we reach millions of Americans through our local presence, digital channels and more than 300,000 purpose-driven colleagues – caring for people where, when and how they choose in a way that is uniquely more connected, more convenient and more compassionate. And we do it all with heart, each and every day.

Position Summary

Are you passionate about driving innovation with compelling assortments and experiences? If so, there is a great opportunity to join CVS as an Assistant Category Manager as part of the CVS Hispanic Strategy Consumables and General Merchandise Team. In this role, you will partner with your leadership to execute the strategy to drive these categories while amplifying the priorities for CVS Retail.

The purpose of the Assistant Category Manager role in is to participate in shaping the category strategy, at the direction of your leader, to drive the P&L to achieve sales, profitability and margin growth, along with training and development of future leaders. In this role you will have ownership of the P&L driving optimal and intentional business towards your category in a creative way. You will use your negotiating skills to immerse yourself in your category, readily sharing best practices with your peers, Senior Category Manager Leader and your Division Market Manager. You will use all available tactics including Assortment, Promotions, ExtraCare, Digital, Social, Marketing, Store Brand and Supplier Capabilities to reach or exceed goals.

To be successful in this role, you must be an excellent communicator (both written and verbal), have experience leading and influencing others (both directly and indirectly), and be able to clearly present to your Senior Category Manager and DMM leadership using your top-notch presentation skills. You must leverage your prior experience to build influential presentations about your categories with a clear narrative leaving everyone in the meeting clearly aligned to the path forwards. You will leverage your clearly defined prioritization skills to proactively anticipate the market and take calculated risks to grow your market share without risking profit on the P&L. If this sounds like the role for you, apply today.

Primary Job Duties & Responsibilities:

Drive Business Results (50%)

• Achieves revenue and margin goals by accomplishing market share growth. Manages all profit and loss targets to include sales, contribution of margin, inventory turns, GMROI and DOS

• Leverages data, insights, and analytics to influence stakeholders and makes recommendations as appropriate.

• Vendor management, collaborates and negotiates with manufacturers and vendors ensuring strategies achieve in-year

• sales and margin goals to promote long-term success and partnership.

• P&L management forecasting and pulling levers to drive P&L

Cross-Functional Stakeholder Relationship Building (35%)

• At the direction of the Senior Category Manager or DMM, fully embraces organizational improvement initiatives, acting as a change agent with one’s own team and peers and partners.

• Establishes and enforces policies and procedures that promote ethical behavior, compliance, and best practices.

• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Facilitates collaboration between different departments to promote a cohesive and integrated approach to achieving organizational goals.

• Drives change agility in self, team and network. 35%

• Measures retention and key performance indicator results on an ongoing basis and provides recurring readout to senior leadership in partnership with cross functional business leads.

• Leverages a results-oriented mindset, using metrics to monitor improvements.

• Develops and manages a standardized set of views that are used to internally monitor macro-level trends and key drivers of each.

• Influences at all levels – up to and including cross-functional SVPs.

• Excellent written and oral communication skills-strong presentation skills required.

• Develops and cultivates collaborative teams within support areas of Marketing, Legal, Digital, Inventory, Pricing, Promotion, Finance, Store Brands, Store Design, Supply Chain, and Store Operations.

• Maintains a supplier relationship for JBP yearly planning, new item reviews and negotiations

Strategic Planning (15%)

• Fosters and shape innovation by bringing ideas to market in an agile way, while balancing growth potential against financial risk for the broader team

• Drives the team to deliver best-in-class merchandising experiences across in-store channel for {insert categories} and lead strategy for {insert categories} catalog, including leading negotiations with all suppliers.

• Develops growth and oversee category strategies rooted in an understanding of the customer and trends.

• Assigns appropriate timelines and accountabilities for items, empowering the team to drive action steps to completion.

• Leverages thought partners (Senior leaders, corporate partners, peers, team, etc.) as needed to create and revisit the strategy.

• Navigates ambiguity and change to achieve goals despite potential obstacles.

• Follows up on strategic initiatives and KPI performance.

• Drives assortment decisions through planograms and features.

• Drives promotional activity strategy, slotting, forecasting and negotiations

Essential Qualifications and Functions:

The successful candidate will have a strong work ethic, be a self-starter, and able to be highly productive in a dynamic, collaborative environment. The ideal candidate will have the following knowledge / skill / ability:

• 5+ years of proven experience in managing edible categories, particularly beverage and dairy

• 5+ years of total merchandising experience

• 5+ years’ experience negotiating contracts with vendors in similar business models

• 5+ years’ experience leading cross-functional teams and initiatives with a high degree of complexity

• 5+ years developing strategies to mobilize the business to achieve goals and outcomes using innovative solutions

• 5+ years influencing with and without authority

• 5+ years leveraging data to support strategic plans and return on investment

• 5+ years’ experience working with a team to prioritize work based on skills, needs, timelines, et.

• 5+ years’ experience engaging and inspiring a cross-functional team to reach optimal business outcomes together

• Highly responsible and accountable for building strong business value

• Consistently leads by example and contributes to overall team success through a positive mindset and resiliency

• Expertise leveraging MS Office Suite, including advanced Excel and PowerPoint capabilities

• Extensive knowledge of retail business operations, including front store merchandising

• Proven track record of the ability to work collaboratively with internal and external business partners to deliver ROI from effective targeting and communication strategies 

• Regular and reliable attendance during normal working hours, as established by the leader

• Any additional tasks as directed by supervisor or manager.

• Bachelor’s degree, OR equivalent experience

• Travel requirements – up to 20% travel expected

Skilled In:

• Strong executive presence and business acumen.

• Superior ability to influence without authority and build relationships quickly.

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, including presenting to large audiences and senior leaders.

• Balancing, coordinating, and executing multiple competing priorities across multiple stakeholders.

• Delegation and assignment of responsibilities within a project to appropriate stakeholders

• Influencing without authority to align multiple stakeholders to a common goal and hold teams accountable for delivering results.

• Framing complex problems and developing solutions that address multiple interests with minimal guidance or direction.

• Identifying risk and mitigation strategies to ensure success.

• Using critical thinking and strategy to balance multiple stakeholders needs (e.g. patient, customer, executives, business owners, enterprise)

• Demonstrating strong attention to detail and follow through with commitments.

Ability to:

• Pivot priorities quickly to adapt to and meet changing business needs.

• Exhibit/model professional behaviors that are consistent with collaborating with senior leadership and that demonstrate a strong bias for inclusion, collaboration, building trust, driving for and delivering results as well as supporting innovation and change.

• Continuously accept feedback and where appropriate, create thoughtful recommendations to adapt governance strategy, involving appropriate stakeholders where needed for alignment.

• Deliver high quality professional communications, presentations, responses, and analyses on a wide range of requests by working quickly, independently and with minimal direction.

• Communicate clearly to small and large groups internally and externally to lead complex projects to completion.

• Collaborate cross functionally with leaders and colleagues’ enterprise wide to solution, implement, and drive results, including execution support where required.

• Plan, develop, and execute short- and long-term goals.

Education

• Bachelor’s degree, OR equivalent experience

Anticipated Weekly Hours

40

Time Type

Full time

Pay Range

The typical pay range for this role is:

$60,300.00 - $132,600.00

This pay range represents the base hourly rate or base annual full-time salary for all positions in the job grade within which this position falls.  The actual base salary offer will depend on a variety of factors including experience, education, geography and other relevant factors.  This position is eligible for a CVS Health bonus, commission or short-term incentive program in addition to the base pay range listed above. 
 

Our people fuel our future. Our teams reflect the customers, patients, members and communities we serve and we are committed to fostering a workplace where every colleague feels valued and that they belong.

Great benefits for great people

We take pride in our comprehensive and competitive mix of pay and benefits – investing in the physical, emotional and financial wellness of our colleagues and their families to help them be the healthiest they can be. In addition to our competitive wages, our great benefits include:

• Affordable medical plan options, a 401(k) plan (including matching company contributions), and an employee stock purchase plan.

• No-cost programs for all colleagues including wellness screenings, tobacco cessation and weight management programs, confidential counseling and financial coaching.

• Benefit solutions that address the different needs and preferences of our colleagues including paid time off, flexible work schedules, family leave, dependent care resources, colleague assistance programs, tuition assistance, retiree medical access and many other benefits depending on eligibility.

For more information, visit https://jobs.cvshealth.com/us/en/benefits

We anticipate the application window for this opening will close on: 01/31/2026

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state and local laws.