Central Merchandising Manager
Salary: Competitive Plus Benefits
Location: Coventry Store Support Centre - Ansty Park and Home, Coventry, CV7 9RD
Contract type: Permanent
Business area: Sainsbury's Commercial & Sustainability
Closing date: 16 June 2026
Requisition ID: 400059066
We’d all like amazing work to do, and real work-life balance. That’s waiting for you at Sainsbury’s. Here, everything in our stores starts in Sainsbury’s Commercial. From product, proposition, packaging and price, to whether it meets our sustainability commitments or simply tastes great, our team is responsible for, all food, non- food and Clothing items available in Sainsbury’s stores, online and on demand. It’s an incredibly fast-paced environment. People here are in it together and aren’t afraid to take risks. The knowledge and experience you gain here could set you up for career moves anywhere else in the business. So, if you’re passionate about your products and just as hungry to learn, you’ll fit in perfectly.
As Central Merchandising Manager, you’ll play a pivotal role in enabling scalable growth and stronger commercial performance across TU Clothing. Sitting within the Clothing Commercial Operations team, you’ll lead the delivery of the merchandising strategy through centralised planning, robust governance and continuous optimisation of tools, processes, and ways of working.
This role is critical in improving commercial control, visibility and execution across the division, strengthening data‑led decision making and ensuring consistent, efficient, and commercially sound merchandising activity.
What you’ll do
You’ll provide central leadership and governance across merchandising planning, ensuring category plans align to the overarching Clothing strategy while identifying growth drivers, trends and future opportunities. The role will focus on developing and embedding clear commercial frameworks and guardrails - including option planning, markdown planning, OTB and stock management, to enable consistent and high‑quality decision making across categories. You’ll lead the evolution of merchandise planning processes, working closely with Technology to drive the change and development roadmap for key tools, and continuously improve how data and insight are used across the business.
A core part of the role is enhancing data visibility, owning the quality of stock insight, managing terminal stock positions and driving progress against key KPIs to protect profitability and stock health. You’ll work in close partnership with Merchandising, Buying, Supply Chain, Finance, and wider teams to embed new ways of working, support performance reviews, and ensure a single, aligned view of Clothing performance across channels.
Who you are
You’re a commercially strong merchandising leader who thrives on using data, insight and structure to drive better decisions. You’re confident working across complex, multi‑category environments and are comfortable leading through ambiguity. You bring a collaborative mindset, are able to challenge constructively, and are passionate about developing teams, improving ways of working and delivering sustained commercial impact.
To be considered for this role, you must have demonstrable, in‑depth experience within Clothing merchandising, including hands‑on experience with merchandising planning, forecasting and commercial decision‑making at pace and scale.
Essential Criteria
- Deep understanding of merchandising planning, forecasting and core merchandising tools
- Strong and broad commercial merchandising experience, with the ability to drive effective decisions across a diverse category landscape
- Proven ability to analyse complex data and translate it into clear, actionable commercial insight
- Experience delivering new processes and continuous improvement, using lean or agile approaches
- Proven experience leading, coaching and developing high‑performing teams
- Excellent communication and influencing skills, with the ability to engage and challenge effectively across functions and senior stakeholders
#Commercial
We are committed to being a truly inclusive retailer so you’ll be welcomed whoever you are and wherever you work. Around here, there’s always the chance to try something new — whether that’s as part of an evolving team or somewhere else across the business - and we take development seriously and promise to support you. We also recognise and celebrate colleagues when they go the extra mile and, where possible, offer flexible working. When you join our team, we’ll also offer you an amazing range of benefits. Here are some of them: Starting off with colleague discount, you'll be able to save 10% on your shopping online and instore at Sainsbury's, Argos, TU and Habitat, and we regularly increase the discount to 15% at points during the year. We've also got you covered for your future with our pensions scheme and life cover. You'll also be able to share in our success as you may be eligible for a performance-related bonus of up to 20% of salary, depending on how we perform. Your wellbeing is important to us too. You'll receive an annual holiday allowance, and you can buy up to an additional week's holiday, and we provide private healthcare. We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, interest free car loan of up to £10k, cycle to work scheme, health cash plans, salary advance (where you can access some of your pay before pay day) as well access to a great range of discounts from hundreds of other retailers. And if you ever need it there is also an Employee Assistance Programme. Moments that matter are as important to us as they are to you which is why we give up to 26 weeks’ pay for maternity or adoption leave and up to 4 weeks’ pay for paternity leave. Please see www.sainsburys.jobs for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).
