Demand Planning Manager

Company overview

Sysco is a global foodservice business that connects people through food and service, supplying restaurants, healthcare providers, education settings, lodging businesses, and other customers who prepare meals away from home. The company focuses on fresh products, practical solutions, and innovation across supply, delivery, and culinary services.

Role summary

Sysco Ireland is hiring a Demand Planning Manager to guide its demand planning function across locations including Newcastle West, Dublin, or Lisburn. This position plays a key role in improving forecast precision, product availability, and waste control, while also supporting growth, transformation, and cross-functional planning activity. The role includes leading and developing a high-performing team.

Key responsibilities

You will oversee the demand planning team and ensure delivery against core KPIs such as forecast accuracy, availability, and waste reduction. The role requires hands-on leadership across hiring, performance management, coaching, and employee engagement.

You will help shape forecasting excellence by introducing better practices, stronger analysis, and continuous improvement. Collaboration is central to the role, with regular coordination across Supply, Marketing, Merchandising, Sales, and Operations.

You will represent demand planning in meetings and projects, support category and business change initiatives, and investigate performance issues to identify root causes and corrective actions. You will also produce reporting and updates for stakeholders, act as deputy to the Head of Demand Planning when needed, manage more than 1 million forecast entities across a multi-echelon supply chain over short- and long-term horizons, and support technology transformation work as a subject matter expert.

Requirements

The role calls for at least 5 years of experience in demand planning or supply chain management, ideally gained in FMCG or another large blue-chip environment. Strong analytical and numerical ability is essential, along with advanced Excel skills; SQL and Power Query are preferred.

Experience using forecasting tools and methods is required, and familiarity with BI tools and Tableau is considered an advantage. You should bring proven leadership capability, including team coaching and development experience, plus the confidence to guide change in a fast-moving environment.

Excellent communication, stakeholder management, organisation, and prioritisation skills are important. A proactive approach and a commitment to continuous improvement are also expected.

Core competencies

The successful candidate will demonstrate agility and innovation, strong cross-functional collaboration, a results-oriented execution mindset, resilience under pressure, inclusive leadership, and a customer-first approach.

Performance measures

Success in the role will be tracked through forecast accuracy metrics such as WMAPE, BIAS, and FVA, along with waste and FTA budget performance, customer satisfaction scores (NPS), team engagement, training and retention, contribution to engagement survey results, and alignment with company values.

Additional information

Responsibilities may change over time to reflect evolving business requirements. This role is based onsite.