Digital Category Lead, Fashion

Job Title: Digital Category Lead

Salary: £76,800.00   – £100,000.00

Contract type: Permanent

Working pattern: We offer a flexible, hybrid working model designed to give you the best of both worlds. Currently, this role is based in our London head office three days a week (Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday), with the remaining two days worked from home.

In this role, you will lead our Fashion category, driving digital performance across apparel, footwear, and accessories. You'll bring a fast-paced, trend-responsive mindset to online trading, ensuring our digital storefront feels dynamic, inspiring, and aligned with seasonal shifts and key brand drops

As we continue to expand and transform our online customer experience, this role plays a pivotal part in driving the digital performance and strategy for our categories. Managing a high-performing digital merchandising team, you will be accountable for annual, period, and weekly performance—anticipating market opportunities, optimizing customer journeys, and leveraging data to drive growth across our digital channels.

Key Responsibilities

• Category Ownership & Strategy: Define and execute the digital category strategy, setting and delivering against revenue, margin, and growth targets across conversion optimization, range, and availability.

• Trading & Performance Management: Own day-to-day digital trading, accurately forecasting performance metrics, communicating insights, and swiftly deploying actions to maximize growth and mitigate risks.

• Digital Merchandising & Journey Optimization: Enhance the end-to-end digital customer journey across search, content, and merchandising; collaborate with product and design teams to remove friction points and improve site conversion.

• Data-Driven Insights & Experimentation: Harness advanced analytics tools (e.g., Adobe, ContentSquare, Tableau) to translate data into actionable trading strategies, running experimentation tests to continuously optimize site performance.

• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Serve as the digital category champion, partnering closely with Commercial, Customer, and Digital teams to align priorities, drive digital transformation, and execute trade plans.

• Campaign & Content Execution: Lead category-specific digital launches and campaigns, supporting SEO, onsite search, and content optimization while maximizing retail media potential.

• Build & Lead High-Performing Teams: Lead, coach, and inspire a team of 6–11 Partners, fostering a growth mindset and driving the adoption of modern tools and AI to blend human creativity with algorithmic precision.

Essential skills/experience you’ll need

• Scale & Pace of Delivery: Proven track record of planning and delivering large-scale content, campaigns, and site optimisations at pace within a fast-moving, dynamic environment.

• Fashion & Apparel Agility: Strong background in online fashion trading, with a deep understanding of trend seasonality, size/fit optimization, and returns mitigation strategies.

• Brand & Trend Storytelling: Experience partnering with major fashion brands and internal editorial teams to curate high-converting landing pages, trend edits, and campaign activations.

• Commercial & Financial Acumen: Strong understanding of financial metrics, e-commerce levers, and budget management, with a track record of translating data into commercial decisions.

• People Leadership: 5+ years of experience leading and developing high-performing, diverse, or remote teams through transformation and change.

• Analytics & Insight Expertise: Comfortable working with analytics tools to make fast, evidence-based trading decisions and site improvements.

• Influence & Executive Communication: Exceptional presentation and communication skills with a proven ability to influence senior stakeholders and cross-functional teams.

• Co-Owned Mindset & Enterprise Thinking: Ability to break down silos, put the customer at the heart of every decision, and act as a responsible owner within a co-owned business model.

Desirable skills/experience you may have

• Multi-Category Retail Expertise: Prior digital or e-commerce experience within a complex, multi-category retail environment.

• Cross-Digital Ecosystem Exposure: Hands-on experience collaborating closely across broader digital capabilities, including Product, Digital Marketing, Retail Media, and CX.

#LI-HYBRID

#LI-HEADOFFICE

We’re the largest employee owned business in the UK and home of our cherished brands, John Lewis and Waitrose. We’re not just employees, we’re Partners, driven by our purpose to build a happier world. As we look to our future, there’s never been a more exciting time to join us.  

We’re ruthlessly focused on being brilliant at retail. We continue to innovate, adapt and diversify. Never Knowingly Undersold on price, quality and service in John Lewis and passionately serving food-lovers in Waitrose.   

As Partners we all share the responsibility of ownership and in its rewards. We use our voices to contribute to our success, working together through the good and challenging times, holding true to our behaviours and treating everyone with kindness and respect. 

We all own making the Partnership somewhere we belong. Embracing our differences and creating an environment where we’re free to be ourselves and can THRIVE. Growing ourselves individually, and as a collective. 

As Partners, we make all the difference. And, we all own it.  

Important points to note:  

It’s important to note that some of our roles are subject to pre-employment vetting (which may include DBS checks for successful candidates). If required, you’ll be informed and provided with information about vetting during the recruitment process and we encourage you to complete any vetting documents quickly to avoid delays. Any DBS checks required will be carried out by a third-party registered body and financial probity checks may also be required for some of our roles.  

We occasionally close vacancies early in the event we receive a high volume of applications, and therefore, we recommend you apply early. If you require a reasonable adjustment due to a disability which means you may need longer to complete your application please contact us as soon as possible.

We want all of our Partners to have a good work-life balance and we support flexible working. This might mean flexible or compressed hours, job sharing or shorter hour contracts, where possible. Please discuss this further with the hiring manager during your interview. 

Attachment: Download Job Attachment