Trade Planning Manager

Overview

As Trade Planning & Events Manager in M&S Food, you lead the development and delivery of category, seasonal and events trade plans, aligning with the food customer plan and commercial priorities. You coordinate critical paths across multiple teams to ensure launches and space activity land on time and with impact for stores. You’ll build cross-functional relationships, manage risks, and drive learning from post-implementation reviews. This role offers the chance to shape trading activity in a dynamic, customer-focused retail environment.

Pay / Benefits

• 20% colleague discount on M&S products
• Competitive holiday allowance
• Discretionary bonus schemes
• Strong pension and life assurance
• Tailored induction and training
• M&S Choices portal perks

Responsibilities

• Lead development and delivery of category, seasonal and events trade plans
• Coordinate critical paths across teams to ensure timely launches and in-store impact
• Build cross-functional alignment with Buying, Supply Chain, Marketing, Retail Operations and SRD
• Manage trade planning processes including phase sign-off, mock shops, baton passes, change control and governance
• Review sales and feedback; lead post-implementation reviews and embed learning

Key requirements

• Strong project management skills coordinating multiple workstreams
• Commercial awareness of sales drivers and retail performance measures
• Ability to influence stakeholders across a complex organisation
• Excellent organisation and communication to simplify complexity

• stakeholder management
• attention to detail
• proactive problem solving
• project management
• cross-functional collaboration
• risk identification and mitigation

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