Senior Planning & Operations Specialist

Great Minds•Dc, DC

7d•Remote

About The Position

The Senior Planning & Operations Specialist, Manipulatives owns end-to-end operational planning and execution for physical instructional manipulatives, including forecasting, production planning, and fulfillment readiness. Reporting to the Senior Director, Strategic Operations, the role partners closely with Product, Marketing, Sales, ePMO, and external vendors to ensure manipulatives are available, cost-effective, and aligned with go-to-market timelines and instructional priorities. The position balances demand variability, manufacturing constraints, and district-level delivery expectations, particularly during peak adoption and back-to-school cycles. Responsibilities include forecasting demand, managing inventory and vendor relationships, addressing fulfillment issues, developing reporting and process improvements, maintaining SOPs, and coordinating RFP and RFQ processes.

Requirements

At least 5 years of experience in the education space, with extensive experience in operations, supply chain, planning, or production management.
Experience managing physical products such as print materials, kits, manipulatives, or educational materials.
Strong forecasting, analytical, and inventory planning skills.
Proven ability to work cross-functionally with Sales, Marketing, Product, and Operations teams.
Experience working with ERP and CRM systems, such as NetSuite and Salesforce.
Excellent communication skills and ability to translate complex operational data into clear insights.
Bachelor’s degree in a related field.

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with adoption-driven demand cycles and back-to-school fulfillment.
Experience managing 3PL relationships and overseas or domestic manufacturing vendors.
Advanced Excel and data modeling skills; familiarity with BI tools is a plus.

Responsibilities

Participate with stakeholders in forecasting manipulative demand across adoption cycles, pilots, samples, and replenishment.
Develop and maintain long-range capacity and inventory models to support growth and seasonality.
Communicate and monitor forecasts with vendors to ensure product availability.
Partner with Sales and Marketing to assess component availability risks and mitigation strategies.
Monitor the established inventory strategy, including safety stock, reserve inventory, and obsolescence management.
Monitor inventory health—including on-hand, committed, backordered, and reserved inventory—and drive corrective actions as needed.
Manage manufacturing and vendor relationships, including lead times, minimum order quantities, cost controls, and quality standards.
Work with Order Management and Customer Success to resolve fulfillment issues, shortages, and escalations.
Serve as the primary operational point of contact for manipulative-related inquiries.
Develop dashboards and reporting for inventory levels, forecast accuracy, fulfillment performance, and risk indicators.
Identify process improvements to reduce cost, increase reliability, and improve cross-team visibility.
Document and maintain SOPs for planning, inventory management, and fulfillment workflows.
Coordinate RFP and RFQ processes with internal and external stakeholders.