Your RoleVictoria's Secret is actively seeking a strategic and highly analytical Demand Planning & S&OP Process Lead to join our Central Planning team within the MP&A organization. This is a high-impact, dual-role position responsible for owning the demand plan and leading the end-to-end S&OP process, ensuring the organization operates with a single, aligned view of demand, supply, and key business tradeoffs.
The successful candidate will build on existing planning foundations while strengthening forecasting tools, improving inputs and governance, and driving a consistent decision cadence across Merchants, Merchandise Planning, Finance, Production Planning, Regional Supply Planning, and D&D. This role will ensure demand planning outputs are decision-ready, integrated into S&OP forums, and translated into actionable priorities and downstream plans.
The ideal candidate is a strong communicator and operator who can synthesize inputs across stakeholders, challenge assumptions constructively, and lead cross-functional forums that drive clarity, accountability, and timely decisions.
Your ImpactDemand Planning Ownership:
- Own and maintain the demand forecast for assigned categories and channels, translating merchant strategy, financial targets, product/category plans, and historical trends into a robust forward-looking demand signal.
- Strengthen demand planning governance and cadence, driving cross-functional alignment on key assumptions, risks/opportunities, and decisions with clear documentation and structured sign-offs.
- Partner with Merchandise Planning and Finance to ensure demand projections align to financial targets and performance outlook, including visibility to gaps vs. plan and recommended actions.
- Identify and quantify key forecast drivers (e.g., floorsets, promotions, pricing, channel shifts, product launches, market changes) and translate them into forecast logic, insights, and exception-based actions.
- Ensure feedback loops from Supply Planning inform demand assumptions, incorporating learnings from constraints, lead times, and execution realities into forecast refinement.
- Develop demand scenarios (base/upside/downside) and communicate implications, risks, and recommended actions to MP&A and cross-functional leadership.
- Drive forecast performance management, including forecast accuracy, bias measurement, and root cause analysis, using insights to continuously improve forecast inputs, methods, and outcomes.
S&OP Process Leadership
- Own and lead the end-to-end S&OP process, including calendar management, meeting orchestration, inputs alignment, and decision documentation across Demand Review, Supply Review, Reconciliation, and Executive S&OP.
- Ensure S&OP forums are decision-driven, with clear agendas, pre-reads, escalation paths, and defined decision rights to drive timely leadership actions.
- Lead Demand & Supply Reconciliation, partnering with Supply Planning to stress-test demand changes against capacity and material constraints and drive tradeoff recommendations (timing, prioritization, service impact, ...).
- Collaborate closely with Supply Planning to co-develop demand/supply scenarios, stress-testing demand changes against capacity and material constraints and supporting reconciliation discussions.
- Facilitate Executive S&OP by preparing decision-ready pre-reads, guiding discussion through key tradeoffs and escalations, capturing decisions and actions, and ensuring outcomes are reflected in downstream plans.
- Translate cross-functional decisions into downstream action, ensuring outcomes are reflected in demand plans and provided as input into supply plans, purchasing, and executive reporting.
- Partner with Reporting & Analytics to enhance tools, data visibility, automation, and data quality-improving transparency and reducing manual effort in recurring S&OP cycles.
Additional Responsibilities
- Participate in business improvement initiatives focused on strengthening planning governance, information flow, and end-to-end process effectiveness across MP&A and Supply Chain.
- Build and maintain planning templates and tools including forecasting models, assumption trackers, risks/opportunities logs, and executive-ready summaries.
- Develop and publish routine reporting and insights (e.g., forecast changes, variance to plan, key drivers, risks/opportunities, decision log status) for leadership and cross-functional partners.
- Train and coach stakeholders on planning inputs, S&OP expectations, and cadence readiness to improve adoption and quality of inputs over time.
- Maintain audit-ready planning documentation, including version control, assumption history, and clear change rationale.
- Contribute to future-state capability building, including scalable ways of working and support for potential future Demand Planner team expansion.
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- Bachelors degree in business, Supply Chain, Finance, Economics, Statistics, or a related field; advanced degree preferred.
- 7-10+ years of experience in demand planning, S&OP, forecasting, merchandise planning, FP&A, or related planning roles.
- Demonstrated experience leading S&OP processes and cross-functional planning cadences, including executive forum preparation and facilitation.
- Strong proficiency in forecasting methodologies, including trend-based forecasting, seasonality, and scenario planning.
- Proven ability to work cross-functionally and influence without direct authority; able to facilitate alignment and drive decisions through ambiguity.
- Advanced Excel skills; experience with planning tools (e.g., Anaplan, o9, Blue Yonder, Kinaxis, SAP IBP) is a plus.
- Experience with reporting/visualization tools such as MicroStrategy (or similar BI tools) is preferred.
- Strong business acumen with ability to connect demand/supply decisions to business outcomes (revenue, margin, service, inventory, capacity).
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills; able to present clearly to executive and non-executive audiences.
- Retail and/or apparel experience strongly preferred, particularly in environments with high variability, condensed calendars, and frequent assortment change.
