Director of Merchandise Planning - Women's
About The Position
As Director, Merchandise Planning, you'll set the financial and strategic planning strategy across all women's categories — defining the long-range vision for sales, margin, and inventory productivity across brands and business units. You'll be a primary strategic partner to Merchandising, Allocation, and the executive team, shaping the company's long-range assortment investment, pricing architecture, and flow strategy. This role requires the judgment to operate at the highest levels of the organization while retaining enough command of the details to challenge assumptions and catch what matters — someone equally comfortable driving alignment in the C-suite and stress-testing an OTB. You'll lead a team, own the talent strategy and bench strength for the planning function, and drive the enterprise-wide evolution of planning tools, processes, and financial discipline.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree
- 12–15+ years of experience in merchandise planning, financial analysis, or related fields, including experience at a senior leadership level
- Proven track record leading planning strategy across an entire enterprise or portfolio of brands
- Advanced analytical and financial modeling skills, with expert-level Excel proficiency
- Executive- and board-level communication, presentation, and influencing skills
- Demonstrated success building, developing, and retaining a leadership team of senior managers/managers, with accountability for organizational design and succession planning
- Exceptional organizational and problem-solving skills, with the judgment to set enterprise strategy while remaining close enough to intervene on execution when needed
Nice To Haves
- Experience leading planning across multiple brands or channels at true enterprise scale
- Deep expertise with enterprise planning systems and financial reporting infrastructure, including a point of view on future tooling investment
- Track record leading transformational, enterprise-wide initiatives (systems, org design, or process)
- Sophisticated, board-ready understanding of retail KPIs and their connection to enterprise profitability and growth
Responsibilities
- Set the divisional strategic direction for sales, margin, and inventory plans, establishing the framework senior managers and their teams build against across every division
- Synthesize performance and market signals across the enterprise to shape long-range investment priorities and enterprise risk posture
- Serve as a primary strategic partner to the executive team, aligning enterprise financial goals with brand and product strategy across the portfolio
- Present strategy and financial recommendations to the executive leadership team and board-level stakeholders, owning the narrative on assumptions, risk, and opportunity
- Architect multi-year strategies that drive enterprise sales, margin, and turn targets, with accountability for consistency and scalability across brands
- Own division-wide visibility into sales, margin, and inventory trends, surfacing systemic risks and opportunities to the executive team before they surface elsewhere
- Define the standard for forecasting, hindsight, and OTB governance, ensuring consistency and rigor across every division and brand
- Drive cross-functional alignment at the executive level to shape enterprise decisions on receipts, pricing, and promotional investment
- Partner directly with Finance leadership on enterprise reforecasting and long-range financial planning, connecting divisional performance to company-wide goals
- Lead enterprise hindsight and investment review forums, translating planning insight into strategic direction for the executive team
Benefits
- medical, dental, prescription and vision insurance
- family planning (fertility, adoption & surrogacy support)
- fitness discounts
- medical travel
- associate discount across all of our brands (J.Crew, J.Crew Factory, and Madewell)
- Summer Fridays
- hybrid work model
- Community Impact
- philanthropic efforts
- J.Crew Cares Program
- Winter Break
- PTO package
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Director
