Job Description:
As the Customer Growth Director SSA at Mars Snacking, you will lead the customer growth agenda across Sub-Saharan Africa by translating deep shopper and customer insights into scalable commercial strategies. In this senior leadership role, you will champion initiatives that enhance availability, conversion, and ROI across diverse retail landscapes—spanning Traditional Trade, Modern Trade, and D-Commerce.
Acting with an enterprise mindset, you will serve as a vital commercial partner to the General Manager Sub Sahara Africa and the broader Africa Business Team. You will steer a passionate team, build enduring strategic partnerships with key trading partners across the region, and unlock long-term profitable growth for our iconic snacking portfolio, including confectionery, salty snacks, and cereals.
What are we looking for?Extensive FMCG Commercial Leadership: A proven FMCG sales and commercial professional with 15–20+ years of progressive experience, demonstrating a strong track record in sales execution, customer development, category strategy, and joint business planning.
Educational Background: A bachelor’s degree is required; an MBA or advanced degree in Business Administration or a related commercial discipline is strongly preferred.
Regional & Channel Agility: Broad market understanding across Sub-Saharan Africa, with hands-on expertise navigating Traditional Trade route-to-market, Modern Trade partnerships, and emerging D-Commerce channels.
Financial & Budget Mastery: Proven experience owning and optimizing multi-market customer, shopper marketing, and display budgets to maximize commercial return on investment (ROI).
People Leadership & Talent Development: Demonstrated track record of leading, inspiring, and developing high-performing teams, fostering inclusion, engagement, and personal growth for direct reports and cross-functional associates.
Mindset & Strategic Vision: A strategic thinker with strong business acumen and executive presence who can navigate complexity, influence key stakeholders, and convert shopper insights into tangible retail execution.
Lead the SSA Customer Growth Agenda: Guide and mentor the Customer Growth Team to formulate and deliver efficient, profitable, and sustainable commercial growth plans across Sub-Saharan Africa.
Drive In-Store & Digital Excellence: Spearhead execution for Intelligent Perfect Store and Perfect Digital Store programs, Transaction Zone initiatives, and impactful shopper activations that improve on-shelf conversion and physical availability.
Deliver Insight-Led Strategies: Translate shopper, channel, and market insights into high-impact category and display solutions, partnering closely with regional sales teams and service partners.
Budget Optimization & Governance: Oversee customer, display, and shopper marketing budgets across SSA, ensuring rigorous evaluation, measurement, and optimal ROI for commercial investments.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner actively with the Growth, Marketing, and Demand Planning teams to feed actionable market intelligence into regional innovation, forecasting, and brand strategies.
Contribute to Business Leadership: Serve as an active member of the Africa Business Team, driving business objectives, organizational capability, and Mars culture across the region.
Work with over 130,000 diverse and talented Associates, all guided by the Five Principles.
Join a purpose driven company, where we’re striving to build the world we want tomorrow, today.
Best-in-class learning and development support from day one, including access to our in-house Mars University.
An industry competitive salary and benefits package, including company bonus.
Skills Required
- 15–20+ years of progressive FMCG sales and commercial experience
- Proven track record in sales execution, customer development, category strategy, and joint business planning
- Bachelor's degree
- MBA or advanced degree in Business Administration or a related commercial discipline
- Broad market understanding across Sub-Saharan Africa
- Hands-on expertise with Traditional Trade, Modern Trade, and D-Commerce channels
- Experience owning and optimizing multi-market customer, shopper marketing, and display budgets
- Proven experience leading, inspiring, and developing high-performing teams
- Strong strategic thinking, business acumen, executive presence, stakeholder influence, and ability to convert shopper insights into retail execution
Mars Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Mars and has not been reviewed or approved by Mars.
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Healthcare Strength — The benefits package is positioned as comprehensive, with broad medical coverage and additional protections like life insurance and short- and long-term disability. Mental health support is emphasized, including free mental health services and wellbeing programming under initiatives such as Mars Be Well.
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Parental & Family Support — Paid parental leave is highlighted as market-leading in the U.S., with an example of 18 weeks fully paid for both parents. Additional family-related leave types such as sick time for caregiving and bereavement leave are also described as part of the overall package.
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Retirement Support — Retirement offerings are described as strong, including 401(k) matching (with a 6% match cited) and pension plans in some cases. The broader package also references retirement savings options and contributions aligned to local market practice, supporting long-term financial security.
Mars Insights
What We Do
For more than a century, Mars, Incorporated has been driven by the belief that the world we want tomorrow starts with how we do business today. This idea is at the center of who we have always been as a global, family-owned business. Today, Mars is transforming, innovating and evolving in ways that affirm our commitment to making a positive impact on the world around us. Across our diverse and expanding portfolio of confectionery, food, and petcare products and services, we employ 133,000 dedicated Associates who are all moving in the same direction: forward. With $40 billion in annual sales, we produce some of the world’s best-loved brands including DOVE®, EXTRA®, M&M’s®, MILKY WAY®, SNICKERS®, TWIX®, ORBIT®, PEDIGREE®, ROYAL CANIN®, SKITTLES®, WHISKAS®, COCOAVIA®, and 5™; and take care of half of the world’s pets through our pet health services AniCura, Banfield Pet Hospitals™, BluePearl®, Linnaeus, Pet Partners™, and VCA™. We know we can only be truly successful if our partners and the communities in which we operate prosper as well. The Mars Five Principles – Quality, Responsibility, Mutuality, Efficiency and Freedom – inspire our Associates to take action every day to help create a world tomorrow in which the planet, its people and pets can thrive.
