Commercial Director, Groceries - #16715

Careem is building the Everything App for the greater Middle East, making it easier than ever to move around, order food and groceries, manage payments, and more. Careem is led by a powerful purpose to simplify and improve the lives of people and build an awesome organisation that inspires. Since 2012, Careem has created earnings for over 2.5 million Captains, simplified the lives of over 50 million customers, and built a platform for the region’s best talent to thrive and for entrepreneurs to scale their businesses. Careem operates in over 70 cities across 10 countries, from Morocco to Pakistan.

About the Team

Careem Grocery is on a mission to reinvent the way people shop for grocery, pharmacy and retail products. As an exciting new vertical within Careem (a startup within a startup), we’re in the early stages of building our product and have plenty of interesting and fundamental challenges to solve in order to achieve our ambitious growth goals in this burgeoning space.

What you’ll do
As the Director of Commercial, you’ll be responsible for driving our strategies on assortment, pricing and promotions across our markets. This is a unique role with the opportunity to create genuine impact for the lives of everyday people in our region. You will report to the Head of Grocery. We’re looking for a leader with an amazing understanding of grocery category management who can help us build our grocery dark store offering from the ground up. Our ideal candidate is someone with a strong sense of the KSA industry, a knack for building selection in a customer obsessed manner and leveraging data-driven decision making, complemented by exceptional leadership skills and the ability to maintain strong external relationships so we unlock the best deals and execute seamlessly.

• Define an actionable strategy for Category Management (assortment, category hierarchy, pricing and promotions) based on Careem Grocery commercial strategy and guidelines
• Strive to continuously update and maintain assortment strategies to reflect market trends, local needs and preferences based on data-driven analysis

• Cooperate with Market heads and Area Managers to effectively tailor assortment to each neighborhood and store

• Establish strong relationships with suppliers and identify new suppliers to negotiate best-in-class deals
• Manage P&L for all categories - Manage budgets and define product margin targets by category
• Drive and own the reporting on category and item-level KPIs and performance to identify potential assortment improvements and derive strategies to improve supplier performance

• Effectively partner with cross-functions including Supply Chain and Central Operations to optimize processes and achieve financial targets
• Grow, lead and influence a team of Category Managers and Pricing Analysts

What you’ll need

Successful candidates will have a passionate commitment to improving the lives of people, an insane focus on excellence and customer centricity, and a strong alignment with our core values and purpose.

• At least 10+ years of experience in category management or purchasing in the grocery industry. Time spent in tech, consulting, strategy, or a start-up is a plus.
• You proactively recruit, coach and mentor top talent and ensure the team is fully engaged and delivering its very best work.
• You are an excellent communicator with any audience – executive, business, design or technology. You can easily explain complex concepts to people of any level.
• Experience in defining solutions to complex, strategic topics with a deeply analytical approach to issues. Sophisticated analytical capabilities is a plus.
• Grittiness. You never hesitate to roll up your sleeves and address something hands-on, you persevere when others fall away

What we’ll provide you

We offer colleagues the opportunity to drive impact in the region while they learn and grow. As a Careem colleague you will be able to:

• Work and learn from great minds by joining a community of inspiring colleagues.
• Put your passion to work in a purposeful organisation dedicated to creating impact in a region with a lot of untapped potential.
• Explore new opportunities to learn and grow every day.
• Enjoy the flexibility that comes with the trust of being an owner; work in a hybrid style with a mix of days at the office and at home, and remotely from any country in the world for 30 days a year with unlimited vacation days per year.
• Access to healthcare benefits and fitness reimbursements for health activities including: gym, health club and training classes.