Senior Ecommerce Trading Manager - Digital Trading & Creative - Customer & Technology

Job description / Role

Role overview

The Senior eCommerce Trading Manager is a critical commercial leadership role responsible for driving online trading performance across Alshaya’s portfolio of digital brands. Reporting to the Head of Online Performance, the role creates a single, fact-based view of performance and works with brand teams to deliver their agreed forecasts, business plans and growth ambitions.

The role contributes to driving the online trading performance cadence across weekly trading meetings, monthly forecasting sessions, monthly core-brand performance reviews and quarterly business reviews. The Senior eCommerce Trading Manager ensures discussions move beyond reporting into clear decisions, ownership and actions.

This individual is expected to understand the complete set of levers that shape online performance, including traffic and online marketing effectiveness, conversion, inventory availability, product and category mix, pricing, promotions and offers, onsite experience, customer demand, fulfilment constraints and trading calendar execution.

The role connects these drivers to explain performance, identify risks and opportunities, and recommend the actions required to close gaps.

The Senior eCommerce Trading Manager acts as a constructive challenger to both central and brand teams. They use robust analysis, commercial judgement and customer insight to test assumptions, challenge underperformance and push for recovery actions that maximise sales, conversion, margin, sell-through and profitability.

The role is also accountable for producing clear, accurate and decision-oriented weekly, monthly and quarterly performance reporting for the Senior Leadership Team, with a concise narrative that explains what happened, why it happened, the outlook, and the actions or support required.

About the role

• Work with the Head of Online Performance to deliver the agreed strategy.
• Work as an integrated part of the brand teams and central eCommerce to execute the agreed strategy.
• Own the consolidated view of online trading performance across Alshaya brands, markets and channels.
• Hold brands and central teams accountable for delivery against forecast and business plan through fact-based challenge and action tracking.
• Connect customer, commercial and operational performance drivers to identify root causes, risks and growth opportunities.
• Be a highly analytical, dynamic and attentive individual with strong relationship-building skills.
• Use data, insights and research to drive idea generation and decision-making.
• Work seamlessly across the organisation, forging strong relationships.
• Identify ways of improving profitability through improved processes.
• Be customer-centric at all times.
• Be an ambassador for Alshaya and a thought leader.

Key responsibilities

Trading performance

• Own the consolidated eCommerce performance view across Alshaya online brands, identifying performance trends, gaps to plan, risks and opportunities.
• Track performance against business plan, forecast and prior year across the full online commercial funnel, with particular focus on sales, traffic, conversion, average order value, margin and sell-through.
• Develop a clear understanding of brand, market, category and channel performance, distinguishing short-term trading effects from structural issues.
• Partner with brand and central teams to agree recovery or acceleration plans and monitor delivery through to outcome.
• Balance growth, margin, inventory and customer outcomes when recommending trading actions.

Online performance tracking

• Actively contribute to weekly trading meetings, ensuring discussion is evidence-led, focused on drivers and converted into clear actions, owners and deadlines.
• Co-chair monthly forecasting sessions with brands, challenging assumptions and supporting the development of ambitious, realistic and evidence-based forecasts.
• Lead the performance narrative for monthly core-brand reviews and quarterly business reviews, connecting results, outlook, risks, opportunities and required decisions.
• Maintain strong action governance across performance forums, following through on commitments and escalating unresolved gaps or dependencies.
• Constructively challenge brand teams where plans, forecasts or actions are not sufficient to deliver the expected performance.

Commercial insight

• Analyse the complete range of online performance drivers, including online marketing performance, traffic quality, inventory availability, range, promotions and offers, pricing, onsite experience, conversion, content, fulfilment and customer behaviour.
• Identify the root causes behind performance movements and quantify the customer and commercial impact of key drivers.
• Assess how trading levers interact, for example how marketing demand, stock availability, promotional depth and onsite execution influence conversion, sales and margin.
• Translate complex data into a clear commercial story and specific recommendations for brand teams and senior leadership.
• Monitor competitor and market activity to identify relevant threats, opportunities and changes in customer expectations.

Reporting

• Own the production and continuous improvement of weekly, monthly and quarterly eCommerce performance reports for the Senior Leadership Team.
• Ensure reporting is accurate, consistent and delivered with a clear executive narrative covering performance, drivers, outlook, risks, opportunities and asks.
• Partner with Data & Analytics and relevant teams to strengthen data quality, reporting definitions, dashboards and access to decision-critical insight.
• Create a trusted single performance view across brand, market and channel cuts, reducing conflicting interpretations of results.
• Continuously simplify and improve reporting so that leadership attention is directed to the most material decisions and actions.
• Deliver a robust report suite across all aspects of trade and constantly seek new ways to visualise and simplify complex trading issues and metrics.

Planning

• Contribute to the eCommerce trading roadmap and annual planning process, ensuring priorities reflect the most material performance opportunities.
• Work with brands to align trading calendars, campaigns, product moments, promotional plans and inventory readiness with commercial targets.
• Collaborate closely with Brand, Marketing, SEO, Customer Experience, Online Operations, Marketplace, Technology, Data & Analytics, Finance, Supply Chain and Merchandising teams.
• Surface dependencies early and mobilise the right teams to remove barriers to performance.
• Promote repeatable best practice, stronger commercial discipline and capability development across the online trading community.

People and expertise

• Be a respected member of a team of experts across the digital business, establishing best practice working processes and developing the online trading community.
• Work seamlessly across the eCommerce team and provide support down to campaign level.
• Work seamlessly with brand teams to ensure that trading activity is delivered in line with set processes and procedures, and in accordance with regional strategies, goals and objectives.
• Work well on your own initiative while also being a fully committed team player.
• Be data-driven, commercially astute, a great communicator, customer-focused and organised.
• Be aware of competitor activity and poised to capitalise on opportunities and repel threats.
• Contribute to the overall mission of the department.
• Constantly look for new opportunities and regularly suggest ways to improve.

Key skills

• At least five years’ experience in eCommerce trading, digital performance, commercial planning or a closely related role, with a strong record of driving measurable performance improvement.
• Demonstrable experience owning trading performance, forecasts and business reviews in a complex retail or consumer environment.
• Experience as a trader who understands how to successfully drive maximum value from a digital shopping environment.
• Good knowledge of all marketing channels and performance marketing techniques.
• Ability to collaborate and co-create.
• Good understanding of UX best practice.
• Calm under intense pressure.
• Experience working directly with senior brand or commercial stakeholders and constructively challenging performance plans and assumptions.
• Strong experience producing executive performance reporting and presenting recommendations to senior leadership.
• Outstanding analytical skills.
• Ability to translate data into actionable insights.
• Great presentation skills and the ability to show complex issues in an engaging way.
• Self-starter with a high degree of initiative.
• Project management abilities and highly organised.
• Ability to multitask and prioritise.
• Attention to detail.
• Commercially minded and extremely driven.
• Expertise with enterprise funnel analytical tools, such as Google Analytics, ContentSquare and Clarity.

Preferred skills

• Fashion and beauty experience.
• Relevant degree or professional qualification.
• Experience in MENA markets.
• Experience with a franchise business model and multi-brand operations.

About the Company

As a leading international franchise operator, with nearly 90 of the world’s most recognised brands in its portfolio, Alshaya Group brings great shopping, dining, leisure and hospitality experiences to millions of customers across the Middle East & North Africa, Russia, Turkey, Europe and beyond.

Alshaya Group is a dynamic multinational business and family owned enterprise with a consistent record of growth and innovation. For 35 years, Alshaya has been a pioneering force in brand franchising, using its exceptional knowledge and experience to expand at pace.

Our portfolio of well-loved international brands includes Starbucks, H&M, Mothercare, Debenhams, American Eagle Outfitters, P.F. Chang’s, The Cheesecake Factory, The Body Shop, M.A.C, Victoria’s Secret, Boots, Pottery Barn, KidZania and, coming soon, Hampton by Hilton.

From one retail franchise store opened in Kuwait in 1983, Alshaya Group has consistently grown and diversified and today offers customers an unparalleled choice of brands across multiple sectors; Fashion & Footwear, Health & Beauty, Food, Optics, Pharmacy, Home Furnishings, Leisure & Entertainment, and Hotels. A diverse, skilled team of 53,000 people from 120 nationalities support more than 4,000 stores, cafes, restaurants and leisure destinations, a growing online business and a commitment to delivering great customer experiences.