Demand Planning and S&OP Manager

Description

Victoria’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.

• 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 (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.

• 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.

• 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 (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.