Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Branch is creating accessible and adaptable office products and is growing its Forecasting & Planning team to support an increasingly complex channel mix. The Senior Forecasting & Planning Analyst will own Enterprise/B2B forecasting, strategic demand planning, cross-functional forecast reviews, tooling and automation, new product introduction planning, product lifecycle strategy, and forecasting process improvements.
Responsibilities
- Enterprise/B2B channel planning: Serve as the primary forecasting and planning owner for the Enterprise channel, partnering directly with Sales and Account Management to translate pipeline and account-level signals into demand forecasts
- Strategic demand planning: Own the higher-level forecasting methodology and assumptions feeding the overall revenue forecast (DTC, Enterprise, Amazon, Wholesale), stepping back from day-to-day tactical placement to focus on scenario planning, risk-flagging, and forecast accuracy improvement
- Tooling & automation: Build and maintain BigQuery-based data pulls, automate recurring reporting/forecasting workflows, and apply AI tools to speed up analysis — reducing manual, spreadsheet-dependent processes over time
- S&OP-style cross-functional partnership: Represent planning in cross-functional forecast reviews with Sales, Finance, and Product; translate business context into planning assumptions and vice versa
- New product introduction (NPI) planning: Partner with Product Development on demand forecasting for new launches, building forecast logic for products with no historical sell-through
- Product lifecycle strategy: Own the strategic view of lifecycle management — discontinuation timing, overstock/understock risk, and recommendations tied to broader merchandising strategy (with room to grow into deeper merch collaboration as the team scales)
- Process & methodology improvement: Identify and implement improvements to forecasting models, planning cadences, and tools as the team's complexity grows
- Strategic analysis: Contribute ad hoc analysis supporting business-wide decisions (assortment, channel investment, inventory strategy)
Skills
- 5–7 years of experience in demand planning, merchandising planning, or forecasting, ideally with prior experience in a formal planner-type role
- Comfort operating strategically and upstream — someone who can build a point of view on "what should the forecast assume" rather than just executing against a set plan
- Strong cross-functional communication skills; comfortable presenting forecasts and recommendations to non-planning stakeholders
- Advanced proficiency in Power BI, Tableau, or Looker — building dashboards and reports from scratch, not just consuming them
- Comfortable writing and optimizing queries to pull and model data directly from the warehouse, reducing dependency on other teams for data access
- Track record of automating manual, repetitive planning processes (e.g., scripting recurring reports, automating data refreshes, building repeatable forecast pipelines) rather than rebuilding spreadsheets each cycle
- Hands-on experience applying AI tools (e.g., Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, or similar) to accelerate analysis, generate code/scripts, summarize data, or build forecasting logic
- Experience with complex modeling, but not the primary tool for scaled work
- Experience with B2B/non-DTC planning is a strong asset (account-based, pipeline-driven, or lumpy-demand forecasting)
- Bonus: experience with NPI forecasting or product lifecycle management
- Python or similar scripting experience is a strong asset, particularly for automation or forecast modeling
Company Overview
Company H1B Sponsorship