Sr. Demand Planning Manager

Microsoft’s Cloud business is expanding, and the Cloud Supply Chain (CSCP) organization is responsible for enabling the hardware infrastructure underlying this growth including AI! CSCP’s vision is to empower customers to achieve more by delivering Cloud and AI capabilities at scale. Our mission is to deliver the world's computer with an industry-leading supply chain. The CSCP organization is responsible for traditional supply chain functions such as plan, source, make, deliver, but also manages supportability (spares), sustainability, and decommissioning of datacenter assets worldwide. We deliver the core infrastructure and foundational technologies for Microsoft's over 200 online businesses including Bing, MSN, Office 365, Xbox Live, OneDrive and the Microsoft Azure platform for external customers. Our infrastructure is supported by more than 300 datacenters around the world that enable services for more than 1 billion customers in over 90 countries.

Microsoft Cloud Planning (MCP) is the central planning function within CSCP focused on forecasting, demand planning, and supply planning for all Microsoft Cloud services and associated hardware, directly impacting the success of Microsoft's cloud business.

Responsibilities

In this role, you will be managing rolling 24-month cloud capacity/demand plan for internal and external customers via a combination of statistical modeling and consensus demand planning. The primary focus will be:

• Lead consensus demand planning process with Engineering Group, Customers, Finance, Field Sales, and Data Science teams to develop a rolling 24-month forecast as part of monthly planning process. 
• Develop technical insights into the product, customer value, COGS and margin drivers to make well balanced data driven decisions for the business
• Manage demand for high priority events and identify macro/micro industry trends affecting demand.
• Own and report forecast accuracy, forecast bias for your customers / business segments. 
• Explain drivers of month-over-month change, and corresponding financial impact. 
• Partner with analytics team for automating reports and building management dashboards. 
• Perform ad-hoc analysis for critical business needs.
• Bring in thought leadership to help management in building vision, and aligning with stakeholders.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Supply Chain, Information Technology (IT), Business, Operations, Finance, Accounting, Data Science, or related field AND 6+ years supply chain, inventory management or sales operations experience, preferably in planning (demand/supply/forecasting), cloud industry experience, infrastructure, data science, and/or channel management experience
  • OR equivalent experience.
• 5+ years of experience working with Product/Engineering Groups and/or high tech supply chain experience.

Other Requirements: 

• Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings:
• Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Preferred Qualifications:

• 8+ years supply chain, inventory management or sales operations experience, preferably in planning (demand/supply/forecasting), cloud industry experience, infrastructure, data science, and/or channel management experience.
• Or equivalent experience. 
• Effective verbal and written communication along with effective interpersonal, and organizational skills. 
• Experience leading cross-functional processes with key stakeholders.
  • e.g. Product groups, Finance, Sales & Marketing, Operations, Planning and Sourcing functions.
• Ability to lead in ambiguous situations, and deal effectively with conflicting priorities and changes. 
• Effective influencing skills and ability to build relationships across multiple layers in the organization. 
• Proficient in business tools (e.g. word, power point slides), analytical tools (Excel modeling, SQL, etc.), and able to generate quality outputs. 
• Experience in leading consensus demand planning process, and a proven track record of executing demand pla