Sales & Operations Planning Manager - Hybrid

The Role

As the Sales & Operations Planning Manager, you will play a crucial role in driving an accurate and reliable demand forecast, which is essential to our commercial success. Your efforts will ensure optimal stock availability, support sales growth, and minimize inventory write-offs.

You will manage the regional monthly demand forecasting process and lead the demand planning component of the Integrated Business Planning (IBP) process, ensuring alignment between commercial objectives and supply chain execution.

Reporting in a matrix structure to both the Regional Sales Manager (Global Travel) and the Head of Insights & Intelligence, you will collaborate closely with Sales teams, customers, and Cluster and Central Supply Chain teams.

Your primary objective will be to continuously improve demand planning and forecasting capabilities, providing a reliable foundation for operational execution and long-term business planning. Through effective cross-functional collaboration, you will help ensure appropriate supply levels and an excellent customer experience.

You will achieve this by leveraging data and market intelligence, creating transparency, and proactively identifying risks and opportunities to support informed business decisions.

Location: Madrid office, hybrid working arrangement.

Principal Accountabilities

• Analyse market dynamics and translate consumer trends, seasonality, passenger mix, and historical data into robust market size and sales forecast models, continuously improving forecast quality and reliability.
• Consolidate insights on product initiatives, lifecycle milestones, promotional activities, and competitor intelligence, proactively identifying volume impacts, risks, and opportunities to protect or grow market share.
• Own the integration of all relevant business drivers into the monthly demand forecast across priority markets and key SKUs, while maintaining appropriate oversight of smaller markets.
• Manage the demand component of the Integrated Business Planning (IBP) process, ensuring that 36-month rolling demand plans are prepared and submitted in each monthly cycle, and coordinating the relevant meetings to drive stakeholder alignment and decision-making.
• Partner closely with Sales teams to develop and align demand plans, ensuring that commercial assumptions, market developments, and customer requirements are reflected in the forecast, while driving alignment between internal demand forecasts and customer forecasts.
• Collaborate with Sales Operations and Central Demand Planning teams to review forecast performance, understand variances, and drive continuous improvement in forecast accuracy and bias, while proactively communicating risks and opportunities to support effective supply chain planning.

Skills and Experience Required

• Extensive experience in demand and/or supply planning, S&OP/IBP, insights, or commercial analytics, ideally within an international or matrixed environment.
• Strong analytical capabilities and a genuine passion for data, combined with advanced proficiency in Microsoft Excel and Power BI.
• Proven ability to translate complex data into actionable insights and communicate clear recommendations to diverse stakeholders.
• Strong stakeholder management and cross-functional collaboration skills, with the ability to align commercial, customer, and supply chain priorities.
• Highly self-motivated, resilient, and comfortable working to deadlines in a fast-paced, performance-driven environment, with the confidence to challenge and improve established processes.
• A collaborative team player who enjoys working across cultures and time zones, embraces change, and demonstrates full professional proficiency in English.

What We Offer

In return for playing your part in building our future, you will receive a comprehensive compensation package with salary, bonus scheme and further benefits as well inspiring places to work and collaborate with purpose. Here at Imperial we will give you the opportunity to grow and learn, innovate at pace and be a part of our purpose to forge a path to a healthier future for moments of relaxation and pleasure for our consumers.

Everyone Belongs

Everyone belongs in Imperial. We are proud of being a truly inclusive organisation. We encourage and welcome applications from people of all ages, genders, ethnicities, nationalities, disabilities, sexual orientation, religions or beliefs and of neuro divergence. We give fair and equal consideration to all our applicants. Please contact us at recruitment@impbrands.com to let us know if we can provide support in helping you complete an application and/or attend an interview.

About Us

We're a truly international company, fourth largest in our industry and operating across 120 markets. An inclusive, innovative global FMCG business supported by 25,000 employees. As we embrace a new era of growth, we are transforming. Our ways of working and culture are driven by a challenger mindset, constantly questioning the status quo where people can bring their best selves to work. Our agility and collaboration are driving our ambitions, innovation and success all supported by our award-winning development programmes that creates exciting and rewarding career opportunities for all.  Encouraging inclusion at local levels and supporting a developing and robust diversity agenda globally, we’re fully committed to creating and maintaining an environment that celebrates and respects difference.

As a matter of policy, Imperial Tobacco or its subsidiaries never requests or requires payment as part of any recruitment process.