Director of Planning & S&OP

DIRECTOR OF PLANNING & S&OP

Reports to: Ryan Holmes, VP of Supply Chain & Operations

ABOUT THE ROLE

You own the brain of HydroJug's planning function — the rolling forecast, the inventory policy, and most importantly the S&OP forum where demand, supply, inventory, and finance come together as a real decision forum (not a status meeting). Today, S&OP exists at HydroJug but it's underdeveloped. Meetings happen. Decisions slip. That's the gap this seat closes.

You are the project manager for S&OP — agenda discipline, pre-reads, decision capture, follow-through. You are also the Director who owns the planning function: Director of Demand Planning and Director of Inventory (Jessica Jensen) roll up to you. You are accountable for forecast accuracy, in-stock service levels, inventory health, and the weekly + monthly executive cadence the rest of the business plans from.

This is the single highest-leverage operating hire HydroJug is making this year. The business is at run-rate, up from $100M two years ago, and the operating teams have outscaled the planning infrastructure. The CFO doesn't have current numbers because the data isn't current; brand BOMs are flying partially blind because inventory health isn't reported daily; the CEO is in too many cross-team decisions because the cadence doesn't close decisions on its own. You fix that.

RESPONSIBILITIES

The S&OP forum and process:

• Weekly Demand + Supply review meetings — agenda, pre-reads, decision capture, follow-through
• Monthly Executive S&OP — the cross-functional forum where CFO + CRO + CEO meet with Operations, Sales, Marketing, and eCommerce to make supply/demand decisions for the next 6-18 months
• Quarterly + annual planning integration — S&OP feeds the financial plan, not the other way around
• S&OP scorecard — forecast accuracy, MAPE by channel, inventory turn, fill rate, OTIF

The planning function:

• Director of Demand Planning (open hire — your first major recruit) — owns the rolling forecast across all channels (Amazon, Shopify, Wholesale, Acta, Purelyte)
• Director of Inventory (Jessica Jensen) — owns inventory policy, PLM, health, aged, and disposition
• The 5 matrix Product Managers (Melissa Haacke · Emily Clark · Kelly Mehmen · Nancy Ibarra · Acta PM open) are matrixed onto Product but you partner closely with them on the demand side

Cross-functional partnerships:

• VP of Sales (CJ) on the wholesale demand pipeline and retailer commit reliability
• VP of eCommerce (Joel McAllister) on DTC + marketplace demand
• CFO (Aaron Davis) on financial planning integration — your S&OP outputs feed his FP&A
• VP of Warehouse (Nate Wadsworth) on inbound + allocation reliability
• Brand Operations Managers (Kenzie Tibbitts · Acta, Rachel Erickson · Puressentials) on brand-specific demand signals

SUCCESS CRITERIA

First 30 days

• 1:1s with every VP and every direct report. You understand how each team's data flows into planning today.
• You've audited the current state of forecasting, inventory health, and the S&OP cadence — what works, what doesn't, where the data gaps are.
• You have NOT proposed any structural changes yet.

First 90 days

• Weekly S&OP runs on a tight agenda that produces real decisions (not status updates). You own the agenda + the follow-up.
• Monthly Executive S&OP is locked on the calendar with a working pre-read template that gets sent 48 hours in advance.
• You've started the search for the Director of Demand Planning (or you've identified the internal candidate from the demand-planning bench).
• Forecast accuracy baseline is measured and published. The business knows where it stands.

First 6 months

• Forecast accuracy is trending up on the channels that matter. MAPE on top-50 SKUs is in target range.
• The CFO sees current numbers because the planning data is current. Finance is in the loop.
• Inventory health is visible daily; aged inventory has a quarterly clearance cadence.
• The Director of Demand Planning is in seat (or close to it).
• VPs and the CEO trust the S&OP forum to make decisions. Cross-team decisions land in the meeting instead of slipping out.

First 12 months

• S&OP is the central planning forum HydroJug runs on. The annual plan is built from it, not bolted onto it.
• The Inventory Analyst bench (Acta + Purelyte Analyst + HydroJug Health/Aged/Reporting Analyst) is in seat and producing.
• Connective-tissue problems that this seat was hired to solve are no longer the bottleneck. The next $100M of revenue isn't throttled by planning quality.

QUALIFICATIONS

1. Cadence quality is the work. The S&OP forum exists today; it's underdeveloped. Your single highest-leverage move is making that meeting produce decisions consistently — agenda discipline, pre-reads, decision capture, follow-through. Most planning Directors think the job is forecasting; at HJ, the job is closing decisions through the forum.

2. The data has to be current, even if it's imperfect. A directional forecast you trust beats a precise forecast you don't. Until the Systems BA bench is fully built, you'll be partnering with a thin analytics team — accept that the data won't be perfect and drive the discipline of current over complete.

3. Demand Planning + Inventory roll up to you. Operate them as one function. Jessica Jensen owns inventory; the open Demand Planning Director will own demand. Make the handoffs between them clean. The customer-facing symptom of bad planning is either stockouts or overstock — same disease, two manifestations.

4. The 5 matrix PMs are your demand-signal partners, not your reports. Melissa Haacke, Emily Clark, Kelly Mehmen, Nancy Ibarra, and the open Acta PM line-manage under Ryan and matrix onto Product. They feed product-launch demand signals into your forecast. Partner with them; don't try to manage them.

5. The CFO is your tightest cross-functional partner. Aaron Davis at needs current planning data to do his job. You feed his FP&A loop. If he's not in the S&OP forum, the forum isn't doing its job.

6. HJ runs lean by design. Don't propose adding bench depth before you've maxed out the current bench. The plan is for a Director of Demand Planning + Director of Inventory + 2 Inventory Analysts + the demand-planning analyst bench. That's enough capacity if the cadence is right.

7. The CEO is in the room for S&OP, but he shouldn't be running it. Hayden will be at monthly Executive S&OP. Your job is to run the meeting; his job is to make the calls only the CEO can make. A working S&OP forum gives Hayden his time back.

ABOUT HYDROJUG, INC.

HydroJug, Inc. is a consumer brand headquartered in Ogden, Utah, designing and selling premium hydration and lifestyle products through direct-to-consumer and major retail channels.