Job Title
Retail Category Technical Manager
Location
Asda House
Employment Type
Full time
Contract Type
Permanent
Hours Per Week
37.5
Salary
Competitive salary plus benefits
Category
Health and Safety
Closing Date
8 November 2026
We have an exciting opportunity for a Category Technical Manager to join our Fresh Core Chilled, Bakery & Counters team.
At Asda, we're committed to becoming Britain's most trusted retailer, and this role plays a critical part in helping us achieve that ambition. You'll be responsible for ensuring our own-brand products consistently meet the highest standards of food safety, legality, quality and responsible sourcing, while supporting innovation and delivering great products for our customers.
Working closely with suppliers and cross-functional teams, you'll protect and enhance the Asda brand, drive continuous improvement across the supply base, and ensure robust due diligence and compliance standards are maintained across your category portfolio.
This is a fantastic opportunity to influence product quality from concept to customer, working across a dynamic and fast-paced area of the business.
What You'll Be Responsible For
Supplier & Technical Leadership
Lead and support our supplier partners to deliver safe, legal and consistently high-quality products for our customers.
Act as the technical lead for your category areas, supporting the Lead Technical Manager in delivering the business strategy and driving technical innovation.
Champion Asda's technical standards both internally and externally, ensuring products consistently meet our quality and compliance expectations.
Develop and implement quality improvement plans with suppliers to drive product excellence and customer satisfaction.
Build strong relationships across the supply base, driving continuous improvement and proactively managing quality and compliance issues.
Use your category and supplier knowledge to identify opportunities, mitigate risks and add value to the wider business.
Conduct strategic supplier risk assessments and support category plans through effective technical governance.
Risk, Due Diligence & Incident Management
Lead the management of product incidents in line with Asda's incident management processes.
Participate in the technical on-call rota, including occasional weekend support where required.
Drive investigations into customer complaints and dissatisfaction, working collaboratively with suppliers and internal stakeholders to implement effective corrective actions.
Use horizon scanning, emerging industry trends and risk intelligence to anticipate future challenges and strengthen category resilience.
Support continuous enhancement of technical frameworks that protect customers and uphold the Asda brand.
Innovation & Business Delivery
Support the delivery of Asda's trade plans and own-brand innovation pipeline.
Partner with Trading and Customer Planning teams to bring innovative, customer-focused products to market.
Lead the technical delivery of new product development projects, ensuring products launch safely, legally and on time.
Manage and influence critical paths to support successful product launches.
Deliver agreed business objectives while balancing customer, quality, compliance and commercial priorities.
Systems, Compliance & Governance
Ensure all active supplier sites and associated product specifications are accurately maintained within Asda's due diligence systems.
Verify that all required compliance, ethical sourcing and responsible sourcing documentation is in place and actively managed.
Support the development and implementation of policies, standards and processes relevant to your category areas.
Monitor and manage key technical performance measures, including: Product specifications
Audit compliance
Withdrawals and recalls
Customer complaints
Supply chain mapping
Support the delivery and ongoing development of Asda's audit framework, using risk-based decision making to drive improvements.
Ensure supplier…