Demand Planning Specialist (18-Month Fixed-Term contract)

Short Intro and About the Job

Danone is one of the biggest FMCG companies and is focusing on bringing health through food to as many people as possible. Do you want to join us to contribute to a healthier world? We are now looking for a:

Demand Planning Specialist (18-month fixed-term contract)

(Full-time, Location: Bulgaria, Sofia)

Why should YOU apply right away?

If you need more than our great company culture, you should keep in mind the opportunity to:

• Develop your career in a dynamic and purpose-driven environment
• A friendly and open working environment
• Enjoy a flexible hybrid working setup (minimum 2 days/week in-office)
• An office in a central part of the city, near a metro station
• Additional health insurance
• Celebrate your birthday with an extra paid day off
• Gift voucher for birthday cake and transport allowance
• Benefit from our Employee Assistance Program for mental well-being and support
• Maximum food voucher allowance

 

YOUR responsibilities:

As a Demand Planning Specialist, you will own and drive the end-to-end demand planning activities for the Dairy and Plant Based portfolio, ensuring accurate forecasting, strong cross-functional collaboration and continuous process improvement to drive business performance and customer satisfaction. You will act as a trusted business partner and bring advanced analytical capabilities to elevate planning maturity.

Demand Ownership& Leadership

• Lead the monthly IBP (Integrated Business Planning) cycle, ensuring alignment across Demand, Commercial, Marketing, RGM, Finance, Supply teams
• Drive consensus- based forecasting and ensure robust assumptions and risks/ opportunities are clearly articulated
• Act as IBP Demand process owner, continuously improving governance, discipline and efficiency

 

Demand Forecasting and Statistical Planning

• Develop and manage 18- month rolling forecasts within IBP tools (eg: SAP IBP) at monthly and weekly level
• Own forecasting at multiple aggregation level: SKU, category, Customer segment
•  Leverage statistical models and business insights to generate accurate demand plans and identify trends, seasonality, baseline evolution, demand variability and risks, improvement opportunities
• Challenge assumptions with data-driven insights to improve forecast accuracy

Strategic Business Partnering

• Provide actionable insights and scenario analyses to support Topline and category strategy
• Translate business inputs (marketing, sales, pricing, innovation) into robust demand plans and proactively identify risks and opportunities, proposing mitigation or growth plans
• Contribute to budgeting and volume planning cycles for Dairy and Plant Based category ensuring alignment between demand plans and supply capabilities

System and Tools Ownership

• Lead forecasting activities directly within IBP systems, ensuring optimal use of functionalities
• Fine-tune statistical models, parameters and planning logic to continuously improve forecast quality and efficiency
• Develop, maintain and enhance Power BI dashboards and reporting solutions to provide clear visibility on demand performance, KPIs and business trends
• Drive data consistency and integrity across systems, ensuring alignment between IBP, reporting tools and source data and act as the key point of contact for reporting and analytics within Demand Planning

 

About You

We are looking for a Demand Planning Specialist with the following profile:

• At least 3 years of relevant experience in Demand Planning or S&OP, preferably within the FMCG sector
• Professional fluency in English and Bulgarian
• Analytical and independent professional with a proactive mindset, strong business understanding, and excellent communication skills
• Practical experience working with IBP platforms such as SAP IBP, APO, or similar planning tools
• Advanced Excel capabilities; familiarity with Power BI or other data visualization tools is an advantage
• Strong knowledge of forecasting techniques, demand planning practices, and integrated business planning processes

About Us, We offer and What's next

About Us

Danone’s mission is bringing health through food to as many people as possible and we want to invite people to join the movement for a healthier world. We recognize the power people should impact the world through their daily choices. Healthy food needs a healthy planet, and this is what our new signature One Planet One Health embodies.

We embrace diversity in our organization. This means giving full and fair consideration to all applicants without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, or disability status.

Are you interested in joining us?Hit the “Apply” button. To comply with GDPR regulations, we cannot process your personal data without given consent. Therefore, we strongly recommend applying directly via our career website.