Senior Category Specialist

Summary

Join Instacart as a Senior Category Specialist and own the performance of key categories across the platform, driving business results through analytical rigor and operational excellence. Develop growth plans, create actionable roadmaps, and execute initiatives to increase category growth. Collaborate with cross-functional teams (Product, Engineering, Marketing, and Commercial) to define and run experiments, optimize collections, and improve product selection. Track performance, identify issues, diagnose root causes, and recommend solutions. Improve search and discovery by auditing results and working with cross-functional partners. Elevate category-specific needs to influence the R&D roadmap and work with Marketing to optimize approaches to driving category growth. This role offers a flexible remote work environment.

Requirements

• 8+ years previous experience in the grocery, retail, or CPG industry with demonstrated cross-functional and collaborative project experience, and a track record of significant business impact
• Comfort with both risk and ambiguity, and skilled at creating organized and structured plans even in ambiguous contexts. Ability to work in a fast-changing environment, with an entrepreneurial approach
• Strong analytics background with a proven ability to translate business needs into analytical frameworks. Experience with SQL, dashboard creation, and root cause analysis
• Experience designing and interpreting experiments to test hypotheses, ideally in an ecommerce environment
• Ability to design and run operational processes to identify both short-term and long-term trends in key business metrics, and to surface these insights efficiently to senior cross-functional stakeholders
• Strong written and visual communication skills serving cross-functional teams, management, and external stakeholders
• Strong retailer and CPG empathy and an ability to understand what matters most to our commercial partners’ business

Responsibilities

• Own a set of key categories (e.g., snacks, pet, baby, alcohol) with a focus on driving business results using a broad range of levers across the platform
• Develop growth plans for key categories by analyzing trends on the Instacart platform and in the broader industry. Create actionable roadmaps and investment theses for how we can drive incremental growth in these categories
• Drive and execute initiatives that lead to category growth. Work with cross-functional partners (particularly Product, Engineering, Marketing, and Commercial teams) to define and run experiments, optimize collections, and improve product selection
• Own performance tracking for priority categories on a weekly basis. Identify issues, diagnose root causes, and recommend course corrections on a near real-time basis
• Improve search and discovery by auditing results and working with cross-functional partners to improve attributes and data mapping
• Elevate category-specific needs to Product to influence the R&D roadmap
• Work with Marketing stakeholders to ensure we’re optimizing our approach to driving category growth through both dedicated category-focused marketing efforts and broader campaigns

Preferred Qualifications

Bachelor's Degree

Benefits

• Instacart provides highly market-competitive compensation and benefits in each location where our employees work
• This role is remote
• This role is eligible for a new hire equity grant as well as annual refresh grants