Sr. Director, Demand Planning & Operations Excellence

Premier Nutrition•Emeryville, CA

22d•$225,000 - $250,000•Hybrid

About The Position

The Sr. Director, Demand Planning & Operations Excellence is responsible for leading the end-to-end Demand Planning function while advancing operational excellence across supply chain people, processes, data, and technology. This role serves as the Process Owner for the Demand Review segment within the Integrated Business Planning (IBP) cycle and is accountable for delivering an unbiased, insight-driven view of demand that enables strategic decision-making across the enterprise. The Senior Director will lead and develop the Demand Planning team, drive forecast quality across multiple planning horizons, and strengthen cross-functional alignment among Sales, Marketing, Finance, Supply Chain, Data & Analytics, and Information Technology. The role will also establish the future-state vision and roadmap for planning capabilities, including process standardization, advanced analytics, capability building, master data governance, automation, and digital planning tools such as o9. This leader will serve as an enterprise thought partner, translating complex business, consumer, customer, and market signals into clear demand insights, scenarios, risks, opportunities, and recommendations. The position is expected to build a best-in-class planning organization that is scalable, digitally enabled, and equipped to support the company’s growth. This role reports into our VP- IBP, PMO, Demand Planning, & Operations Excellence.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Supply Chain, Operations, Business, Finance, Analytics, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent relevant work experience.
12+ years of progressive experience across supply chain, operations, planning or related disciplines with demonstrated understanding of end-to-end supply chain interdependencies
8+ years of experience managing multiple direct reports
Significant direct experience leading Demand Planning in a complex, fast-paced organization, preferably within consumer packaged goods or a related industry.
Demonstrated expertise in statistical forecasting, demand analytics, scenario planning, and the integration of consumption, customer, market, and business intelligence into the demand plan.
Experience serving as a leader or process owner within an Integrated Business Planning or Sales and Operations Planning environment.
Demonstrated experience leading, coaching, and developing high-performing teams.
Experience designing and implementing supply chain processes, capabilities, governance models, and continuous-improvement programs.
Experience with advanced planning systems, preferably o9, and supporting analytics or visualization platforms such as Tableau or Power BI.
Experience leading or supporting system implementations, integrations, enhancements, or digital transformation initiatives.
Experience with data governance, master data, analytics, automation, and technology-enabled process improvement.
Demonstrated experience leading complex, cross-functional initiatives and influencing decisions across Commercial, Finance, Supply Chain, Technology, and senior leadership stakeholders.
Project, program, or transformation management experience.
Enterprise leadership: Connects Demand Planning and Operations Excellence priorities to broader commercial, financial, operational, and strategic objectives.
Strategic thinking: Establishes a compelling future-state vision and translates that vision into executable roadmaps, priorities, and measurable outcomes.
Demand Planning expertise: Demonstrates strong knowledge of forecasting methodologies, statistical modeling, forecast performance measurement, scenario planning, and demand drivers.
IBP leadership: Understands how demand, supply, financial, and strategic plans connect and can lead effective cross-functional decision-making within an IBP framework.
Data storytelling: Translates complex data and analytical findings into clear insights, scenarios, implications, and recommendations for senior leaders.
Influence and collaboration: Builds trusted relationships, navigates competing perspectives, and brings stakeholders along toward aligned decisions.
People leadership: Coaches, empowers, and develops talent while establishing clear accountability and high performance expectations.
Change leadership: Leads teams through ambiguity, transformation, competing priorities, uncertainty, and evolving business requirements.
Continuous-improvement mindset: Challenges existing processes, identifies root causes, simplifies work, and builds sustainable solutions.
Digital and analytical fluency: Demonstrates comfort with advanced analytics, planning platforms, automation, system implementations, and technology-enabled transformation.
Business and technical integration: Translates business needs into clear process, data, analytics, and technology requirements.
Communication: Demonstrates excellent written, verbal, facilitation, and executive presentation skills, with the ability to simplify complex topics.
Decision quality: Applies structured thinking, sound judgment, diverse perspectives, and fact-based analysis to make effective decisions.
Execution: Prioritizes effectively, drives ownership, follows through on commitments, and delivers results across multiple concurrent initiatives.
Innovation: Brings creativity, curiosity, exploration, and a willingness to test new ways of working.
Attention to detail: Maintains a high standard of accuracy and discipline while retaining an enterprise-wide perspective.
You'll spend a significant portion of your day working on a computer, reviewing data, creating reports, communicating with partners, and joining virtual and in-person meetings
This role requires frequent and ongoing use of a keyboard, mouse, phone, and other office technology
You'll regularly navigate multiple systems at once, analyze detailed information, and shift between competing priorities and deadlines
You'll communicate regularly with team members, cross-functional partners, external partners, and leaders through meetings, Outlook based email, messaging platforms such as Microsoft Teams, and presentations
Occasional movement around the office may be required for meetings, collaboration, and team activities
May occasionally lift or move office materials weighing up to 10 pounds

Nice To Haves

If you embody a growth mindset, see challenges as opportunities to develop, and find innovative ways to get the real work that matters done, you sound like our kind of candidate!
Enterprise-wide savvy and perspective
Drive and ownership of results
Influence and inspire
Coach and empower
Bring people along
Be a builder
Thrive in ambiguity and competing priorities
Practice radical candor by caring personally and challenging directly
Creativity, exploration, and innovation
Learning and growth mindset
You want to be an integral part of shaping and nurturing an amazing work culture.
You can be flexible in your approach to people challenges and abandon past practices if they don’t make sense or would lead to a poor outcome.
You are comfortable being natural, casual, open, and even a bit playful at work.
You don’t have a big ego and hate siloed thinking.
You like to get sht, I mean—stuff done.
You can be friendly, vulnerable, and self-deprecating in one moment, and deal with a challenging, delicate people-related matter as a professional in the next.
You can do periods of focused, deep work on projects that drive the needle.

Responsibilities

Lead and develop a high-performing Demand Planning organization by providing strategic leadership, coaching, and mentorship that builds trusted enterprise partnerships, reinforces accountability, and enables actionable, insight-driven work.
Establish clear goals, performance expectations, and operating routines that reinforce ownership, transparency, and continuous improvement.
Build a culture of curiosity, learning, constructive challenge, and fact-based decision-making across the Demand Planning function and the broader Operations organization.
Develop and execute a multi-year talent and capability roadmap that strengthens future-ready competencies in advanced analytics, statistical forecasting, AI-enabled planning, planning systems, business acumen, communication, influencing, and leadership.
Build a strong succession pipeline through structured development plans, targeted coaching, stretch opportunities, and ongoing skill-building.
Partner with Operations leaders to identify organizational capability gaps and establish clear roadmaps for closing those gaps.
Lead the development and deployment of supply chain capability-building programs, including training, playbooks, job aids, process documentation, skills assessments, and communities of practice.
Promote a builder mindset by encouraging the team to challenge existing approaches, experiment with new capabilities, and continuously improve how work is performed.
Create an inclusive team environment that values diverse perspectives, supports healthy debate, and brings people along through periods of change.
Lead the end-to-end monthly Demand Planning process, serve as Process Owner for Demand Review within the IBP cycle, and ensure Demand Planners lead forums that generate aligned decisions, clear outputs, and visible risks and opportunities.
Deliver a credible, unbiased, insight-driven rolling 18-month demand plan, with a path toward 24- to 36-month planning, that integrates business assumptions, market signals, risks, opportunities, scenarios, and recommended actions.
Oversee demand planning forums and establish clear expectations for inputs, assumptions, decision rights, escalation protocols, and outputs.
Engage in key rhythm-of-business forums, including S&OE, Command Center, Strategic Business Unit sessions, Supply Review, Integrated Reconciliations, annual planning, and long-range planning processes.
Guide collaboration with Sales, Marketing, Finance, Supply Chain, Data & Analytics, IT, and other partners to create transparency around demand drivers, including distribution changes, promotions, pricing, media investments, customer plans, competitive activity, consumption trends, and innovation launches.
Monitor external demand signals such as syndicated data, point-of-sale trends, customer behavior, macroeconomic indicators, category trends, and competitive actions to enrich the organization’s view of future demand.
Identify and communicate material demand risks and opportunities, ensuring scenario implications and recommended actions are visible to senior leadership.
Translate complex data, trends, assumptions, and scenarios into concise executive-level insights and recommendations that support timely decision-making.
Represent the Demand Planning function in enterprise planning and leadership forums, preparing and delivering decision-oriented materials for executive audiences.
Partner with Supply Planning leadership to establish inventory and weeks-of-supply parameters informed by current demand trends, forecast variability, lead times, and service objectives.
Connect demand insights across near-term execution, IBP, annual planning, and long-range planning to inform financial commitments, budgets, capacity decisions, inventory strategies, innovation plans, portfolio choices, and strategic investments.
Serve as a trusted enterprise thought partner to Finance, Marketing, Sales, Supply Chain, and senior leadership by translating business, consumer, customer, and market signals into concise executive-level insights.
Define and execute the Operations Excellence and Planning Center of Excellence roadmap across people, processes, data, analytics, and tools.
Establish a multi-year roadmap to advance supply chain planning maturity, scalability, and business impact across Operations.
Design and implement future-state planning capabilities that improve agility, visibility, clarity, insight generation, scalability, decision quality, and end-to-end connectivity across the supply chain.
Drive process optimization initiatives that simplify workflows, reduce manual effort, shorten cycle times, improve handoffs, and strengthen end-to-end accountability.
Champion a mindset of operational excellence through structured problem-solving, root-cause analysis, standard work, clear governance, and continuous improvement.
Provide leadership in advanced forecasting methodologies by integrating statistical modeling, historical data, consumption and shipment signals, customer insights, market intelligence, and business judgment into planning routines.
Own governance for key Demand Planning measures, including forecast accuracy, MAPE, bias, rolling 90-day forecast performance, forecast value add, and other relevant planning health indicators.
Establish clear Demand and Supply KPI definitions, targets, ownership, reporting routines, and corrective-action processes to drive consistent cross-functional accountability.
Lead quarterly planning and supply chain analytics, including segmentation, best-fit statistical modeling reviews, lowest-landed-cost prioritization, and other recurring analyses that support business decisions.
Maintain current knowledge of industry practices, emerging technologies, planning methodologies, analytics capabilities, and supply chain trends.
Translate external best practices into recommendations for the company’s long-term planning and Operations Excellence roadmap.
Shape the long-term technology roadmap for Demand and Supply Planning, including planning tools, analytics platforms, master data, reporting, automation, and advanced planning capabilities.
Own the business relationship and performance of the o9 planning platform, partnering with IT, Data & Analytics, business stakeholders, and external technology partners to strengthen functionality, adoption, accuracy, and business value.
Ensure the o9 platform and supporting reports deliver accurate, consistent, timely, and decision-relevant information.
Partner with IT, Data & Analytics, business stakeholders, and o9 to investigate and resolve data integrity, reporting, system functionality, integration, and user-adoption issues.
Evaluate new o9 functionality and determine its potential business value, readiness, prioritization, and alignment with the broader planning roadmap.
Lead the business design and adoption of new planning capabilities that affect Demand and Supply processes, including S&OE, optimization, solver functionality, scenario planning, workflow automation, enhanced analytics, and digital planning tools.
Partner with IT to identify opportunities to centralize and optimize master data setup, maintenance, monitoring, and exception management.
Advance the digitization of supply chain operations by improving visibility, automating repetitive activities, strengthening exception-based management, and enabling teams to focus on higher-value analysis and decision support.
Develop the reporting and analytics required to facilitate Demand Review, S&OE, IBP, and other enterprise planning forums, leveraging o9 and supporting platforms such as Tableau and Power BI.
Promote system adoption by ensuring that processes, governance, training, and user capabilities evolve alongside technology investments.
Participate in industry conferences, professional networks, and learning opportunities to identify emerging best practices in planning capabilities, processes, analytics, and technology.
Participate in company-wide activities, leadership forums, and employee events.
Build relationships through formal and informal conversations with colleagues and cross-functional partners.
Complete administrative activities such as calendaring, expense reporting, team communications, and other responsibilities required to support effective leadership.