The Senior Demand Planner (SDP) position is responsible for developing, managing, and continuously improving the company’s sales forecast for finished goods. This role leads the demand planning process by collaborating with Sales, Marketing, Finance, and Operations to generate an accurate, data-driven forecast that supports production planning, purchasing, inventory optimization, and financial objectives.
The SDP facilitates demand review meetings, analyzes forecast performance, identifies risks and opportunities, and provides actionable insights to senior leadership to ensure alignment between demand, supply, and business strategy.
Primary Duties and Responsibilities
Demand Forecasting
- Own and maintain the rolling 12–18 month demand forecast for all finished goods.
- Develop and lead a top-down and bottoms-up forecasting process
- Model future sales based on statistical methods such as regression analysis, time series and others while also factoring in customer insights, promotional plans, product launches, seasonality, and market intelligence.
- Align forecast assumptions with Finance for budget and financial planning purposes.
- Ensure forecast is updated for supply planning purposes and aligned with supply planning timelines.
S&OP / Cross-Functional Alignment
- Lead yearly forecasting for budgeting purposes
- Taking the top line revenue goals and exploding it down to a mid-level point in the demand planning hierarchy based on historical data.
- Drive a bottom-ups forecast with the sales and marketing teams and aggregate them up to a mid-level point in the demand planning hierarchy
- Lead consensus forecast agreement by reconciling the top-down and bottoms up forecasts
- Lead monthly demand review meetings with Sales, Marketing, Finance, and Supply Chain to continuously improve the demand model and incorporate any new insights
- Present forecast changes, risks, and opportunities to senior leadership.
- Communicate significant forecast adjustments to the Master Planner and Supply team to support production planning.
Forecast Performance & Analytics
Inventory & Short-Term Projection Support
Budgeting & Financial Alignment
Continuous Improvement
