Senior Demand Planner

A typical week often involves forecast review, S&OP leadership, junior-analyst coaching, and the steady cadence of cross-functional alignment — overseeing model runs, leading the consensus meeting, sitting with sales and marketing on commercial signals, prepping executive forecast briefings. You're often the senior judgment when statistical models and business input pull different directions. Forecast accuracy, bias, and downstream supply impact anchor the operating view.

Friction tends to come from the political layer of senior forecasting — sales wants more for their pipeline, finance wants less for prudence, and the senior planner's judgment shapes which signals get weighted. Variance across employers is wide: at CPG firms senior planning is structured with mature S&OP; at industrial or high-tech firms the process may be newer and more contested.

The role tends to suit people who are analytically deep, commercially fluent, and politically deft in cross-functional debate. APICS CPIM, IBF CPF, and senior supply-chain credentials anchor advancement. The trade-off is the perpetual second-guessing when forecasts miss — every variance gets explained, even when the underlying business is genuinely volatile.