Demand Planning Manager in Manchester

Spectrum Brands, a ~$3B global consumer products company, are on the lookout for an experienced and commercially minded EMEA Demand Planning Manager to lead the demand planning function across our Home & Personal Care division throughout Europe, the UK, Middle East and Africa. This is a high-impact leadership role, responsible for driving forecast accuracy, improving planning capability, and ensuring the business has a robust and aligned demand plan to support strategic growth.

Reporting into the Head of EMEA Planning, you will lead a team of seven Demand Planners and play a key role within the wider S&OP process. Working cross-functionally with Sales, Marketing, Supply Chain and Finance, you’ll ensure demand plans are both commercially informed and operationally achievable, enabling effective decision-making across the region. This role would suit someone who thrives in a fast-paced environment, enjoys building high-performing teams, and is passionate about using data, insight and collaboration to drive business performance.

As EMEA Demand Planning Manager, you will own the end-to-end demand planning process across multiple EMEA markets, ensuring the delivery of a single aligned consensus forecast that supports operational and financial objectives. You’ll lead the Demand Review process within S&OP, providing an accurate unconstrained forecast while identifying risks, opportunities and key market insights for senior stakeholders. A key part of the role will be developing and embedding consistent forecasting standards, governance and best practices across the region, whilst still allowing flexibility for local market requirements.

You’ll work closely with commercial teams to understand promotional activity, product launches and market trends, ensuring forecasts reflect the latest business intelligence. Partnering with Supply Planning and Finance, you’ll help balance demand with operational capability and support wider budgeting and forecasting activities. Alongside leading the team day-to-day, you’ll focus heavily on continuous improvement - analysing forecast performance, identifying root causes, improving processes and driving planning maturity across the organisation. You’ll also support system enhancements and project activity linked to demand planning and wider supply chain transformation initiatives.

Success in the role will be measured through forecast accuracy and bias, inventory optimisation, excess and obsolete stock management, and customer service performance.

We are looking for an experienced Demand Planning leader with a strong understanding of S&OP and a proven ability to operate within complex regional or global environments. You bring both strategic thinking and operational delivery, with the ability to influence stakeholders at all levels and drive alignment across cross-functional teams. You’ll be confident leading and developing teams, creating a culture of accountability, collaboration and continuous improvement. Strong analytical capability is essential, alongside the ability to turn data into clear insight and actionable recommendations.

You’ll also bring experience working with ERP and planning systems such as SAP, S/4 Hana, SAP IBP or similar tools, with a solid understanding of forecasting methodologies, planning governance and demand analytics.

You’ll ideally have:

• 5+ years’ experience within Demand Planning, including leadership experience managing planning teams
• Strong exposure to S&OP processes within a fast-paced commercial environment
• Experience working with forecasting and planning systems such as SAP, SAP IBP or similar
• Strong analytical and forecasting capability, including statistical analysis and interpretation
• Experience managing complex supply chains, including Far East / long lead-time suppliers
• The ability to influence and collaborate effectively across Sales, Marketing, Supply Chain and Finance
• A degree in Business, Supply Chain, Finance, Logistics, Economics or a related discipline

This is an exciting opportunity to join a business operating across a diverse and growing EMEA region, where you’ll have real visibility, influence and the ability to shape planning capability at scale. You’ll be joining a collaborative environment that values innovation, continuous improvement and strong leadership, with the opportunity to make a genuine impact across the organisation.

Benefits: 25 days holiday + Bank holidays, Company Pension, Life Assurance, Private Health Care, Colleague discount, Hybrid working (3 days onsite, 2 days WFH)