Principal Program Manager – Demand Planning

About the role

We are seeking a Principal Demand Planner to lead forecasting and decision-making through rigorous modeling, business intelligence, and market analysis. The ideal candidate has deep experience consolidating large, complex data sets; identifying meaningful patterns, inconsistencies, and unexplained outliers; and translating detailed findings into clear, actionable recommendations. This role requires exceptional attention to detail, strong cross-functional coordination, and the ability to continuously improve the inputs, assumptions, and methods used for strategic demand forecasting.

Responsibilities

• Develop, maintain, and improve end-to-end long-range demand models at the customer, initiative, SKU, and geographic levels, providing supply chain teams with accurate, timely inputs to meet customer demand.
• Consolidate large data sets from multiple systems and stakeholders, validate data quality, reconcile conflicting inputs, and investigate unexplained variances and outliers.
• Build demand plans based on strategic goals, business trends, historical patterns, and inputs from engineering, customer management, product management, networking, data center, finance, and supply chain teams.
• Proactively coordinate with cross-functional partners to obtain complete, accurate, and timely inputs required for planning processes.
• Analyze forecast performance, identify emerging patterns and risks, and distinguish meaningful demand signals from anomalies or incomplete data.
• Present demand plans, assumptions, risks, and recommendations to senior leaders across capacity planning, operations, supply chain, engineering, customer management, and finance to drive alignment.
• Develop prioritized, flexible, and durable mitigation strategies for forecast risks and data gaps.
• Balance long-range planning with short-term execution while maintaining an end-to-end understanding of supply chain dependencies.
• Partner with product management to evaluate product lifecycles, transitions, substitutions, and their impact on demand.
• Provide detailed demand analysis and planning inputs to management, finance, and operations teams supporting the corporate S&OP process.
• Produce routine and ad hoc analyses for senior management, clearly summarizing complex data, assumptions, findings, and unresolved issues.
• Maintain disciplined demand review processes that improve forecast accuracy, data integrity, and accountability.
• Translate business strategy and qualitative inputs into measurable forecasting assumptions and models.
• Partner with business intelligence teams to convert planning processes into scalable system models that support capacity, resource, and performance requirements.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, Supply Chain Management, Engineering, or a related field.
• 5+ years of relevant demand planning and forecasting experience.
• Extensive experience developing demand plans and forecasts for new and existing products.
• Advanced ability to consolidate, validate, and analyze large data sets from multiple sources.
• Demonstrated ability to identify trends, correlations, data quality issues, and unexplained outliers requiring further investigation.
• Strong attention to detail, with a consistent record of producing accurate, high-quality work under tight deadlines.
• Understanding of how revenue goals, customer usage, overhead, buffer requirements, and data center space and power constraints affect capacity planning.
• Experience forecasting server, storage, and networking demand.
• Advanced Excel modeling skills, including complex forecasting models with multiple inputs, assumptions, and scenarios.
• Ability to move between detailed data analysis and concise executive-level communication.
• Experience working directly with vice presidents and executive stakeholders.
• Experience with infrastructure hardware, including memory, CPUs, JBoDs, servers, and related components.
• Ability to read and interpret bills of materials, product specifications, and technical documentation.

Preferred Qualifications

• Cloud infrastructure experience.
• Ability to operate effectively in ambiguity and make sound decisions with incomplete or conflicting information.
• Experience translating large volumes of complex data into clear conclusions, risks, and recommended actions.
• Experience defining and maintaining operational metrics that measure forecast accuracy and demand planning performance.
• Demonstrated success building, documenting, and improving business processes.
• Ability to work across technical and non-technical teams, obtain required inputs, resolve discrepancies, and overcome obstacles.
• 7+ years of experience with Microsoft Office, including PowerPoint, Excel, Word, Outlook, and Access.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to summarize complex information clearly and concisely for varied audiences.
• Ability to prioritize competing requests and meet tight deadlines without compromising accuracy.
• Working proficiency in SQL.

Pay

Hiring range in USD from: $90,100 - $209,500 per year. May be eligible for bonus and equity.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance, including expert medical opinion
• Short term disability and long term disability
• Life insurance and AD&D
• Supplemental life insurance (Employee/Spouse/Child)
• Health care and dependent care Flexible Spending Accounts
• Pre-tax commuter and parking benefits
• 401(k) Savings and Investment Plan with company match
• Paid time off: Flexible Vacation for salaried employees; accrued vacation for hourly employees (13 days annually for the first three years, 18 days annually thereafter, prorated for part-time)
• 11 paid holidays
• Paid sick leave: 72 hours upon hire, refreshes annually, carries over up to 112 hours
• Paid parental leave
• Adoption assistance
• Employee Stock Purchase Plan
• Financial planning and group legal
• Voluntary benefits including auto, homeowner, and pet insurance