Sr. Director, Demand Planning & Operations Excellence

Premier Nutrition Company, LLC

$225K — $250K *
Manufacturing & Automotive
11 - 15 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 7-10 years of experience in demand planning and operations leadership.
  • Proven ability to manage complex supply chain processes and cross-functional collaboration.
  • Strong analytical skills with experience in advanced analytics, statistical forecasting, and AI-enabled planning.
  • Demonstrated track record in leading organizational change and building high-performing teams.
  • Exceptional communication skills, with a talent for translating complex data into actionable insights.

Responsibilities

  • Lead the end-to-end monthly Demand Planning process as the Process Owner for Demand Review within the IBP cycle.
  • Deliver unbiased, insight-driven rolling demand plans spanning 18-36 months.
  • Engage cross-functionally with Sales, Marketing, Finance, Supply Chain, and IT to create transparency around demand drivers and scenarios.
  • Define and execute the operations excellence roadmap to enhance planning maturity and capabilities.
  • Champion process optimization initiatives, driving continuous improvement across workflows and accountability.

Benefits

  • Flexible hybrid work environment with in-person collaboration three days a week.
  • Modern headquarters with amenities including a gym and café for employee wellness.
  • Commitment to talent development through structured career progression and training programs.
  • Culture focused on innovation, diversity, and inclusive decision-making.
  • Active initiatives for operational excellence and capability building.
Full Job Description
The role you're interested in...

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.

The work environment...

So, what's it like to work here? If you're based in the greater Bay Area, you'll walk into our Emeryville office each Tuesday morning and start the in-person portion of our hybrid work week at our weekly all-company meeting and find close to 200 of your colleagues, some sitting with their dogs, talking excitedly through the week ahead and watching a newer teammate tell their personal life and career journey followed by a quick update on any hot topics that might be relevant to the week ahead.

We are a dynamic, HYBRID workplace, with an expectation that all employees come into the office Tuesday through Thursday. We are very intentional about connecting in person for things like innovation, impromptu collaboration, having respectful challenges to get to better decisions, leadership role-modeling, and culture building. Great work cultures are built on stories about what great looks like in practice, and great stories during virtual meetings just don't happen. The expected pay scale for this role is $225k to $250k, which may vary based on relevant experience, qualifications, geographic area (if applicable), and internal equity for the role.

At the beginning of 2026, we moved into our massive modern 133,000 square foot headquarters in Emeryville, California, complete with spacious personal workspaces, gym with rock-climbing wall, a café, free onsite parking, tons of greenery, and many transportation options.

You're excited about this opportunity because your time will be filled with...

People: Leadership, Talent Development & Capability Building: 25% of your time
  • 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.


Demand Planning, IBP & Enterprise Decision Support: 30% of your time
  • 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.

Operations Excellence, Process Design & Performance Management: 25% of your time
  • 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.

Digital Planning, o9, Data Governance & Automation: 10% of Time
  • 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 capab

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