The role: What's in the Box
We're looking for a highly technical Demand Planner who blends deep forecasting expertise with strong data engineering skills. This is a hands-on analytical role: you must have a proven track record of applying SQL specifically to demand planning and forecasting data. You'll spend your time writing queries to build reports, run deep-dive analyses, validate demand models, and use your planning expertise to drive operational decisions.
You'll support the demand signal that dictates every operational decision at HelloFresh, from how much food we order to how many staff we schedule and how many trucks we book. Your work directly contributes to reducing food waste, improving product availability, managing labour costs, and protecting customer experience for millions of meals across Europe.
Our Demand Planning team is evolving into a new structure that splits the ownership of the final demand numbers from the ownership of the forecasting methods. You will contribute to that transformation, supporting country-level market planners and category experts to build next-generation forecasting capabilities, while keeping daily supply chain execution accurate and ensuring market inputs are aligned on time.
What you’ll do: The Recipe
- Data Extraction & Modeling for Insights: Write and maintain SQL queries to extract, transform, and analyse demand data across cloud platforms (e.g., Databricks, Snowflake). Ensure the data is structured to power accurate forecasting models, test hypotheses, and generate clear business takeaways.
- Dashboard Creation: Build and maintain automated reporting using visualisation tools (e.g., Tableau, Genie) that give stakeholders access to operational KPIs such as forecast accuracy, bias, waste risk, and availability.
- Pipeline Scalability: Work alongside forecast engineers and senior analysts to support scalable pipelines, ensuring local market nuances are handled within the unified codebase.
- AI Integration: Use AI tools (e.g., Gemini, Claude) to speed up everyday tasks like writing SQL, debugging queries, and summarising data; we encourage experimentation to help the team work smarter.
- Plan Generation: Support the creation and validation of daily and weekly demand plans for European markets, ensuring the Decision-Time forecast is accurate at the exact moment Procurement and Production need to act.
- Trend Monitoring: Monitor trends and seasonality using a data-driven approach, flagging when the plan needs adjusting and escalating where appropriate.
- Performance Tracking: Track forecast performance against KPIs (MAPE, bias) and their downstream impact on waste and fulfilment, surfacing findings that help the team improve.
- Proactive Data Quality & QA: Act as the first line of defence for forecast reliability. Own the day-to-day data validation across demand pipelines, proactively identifying anomalies, flagging data breaks, and ensuring all inputs are clean before they influence the final plan.
- Deviation Root Cause Analysis: Whenever deviations between the forecast and actuals occur, lead deep-dive investigations to identify the underlying drivers. Translate these findings into immediate, actionable
- S&OP Participation: Participate in the weekly operational planning cycle, preparing materials and analysis for meetings with Market Leadership, Logistics, Production, and Procurement.
- Commercial & Marketing Alignment: Partner with Marketing and Commercial teams to ensure growth campaigns, promotions, and new product launches are accurately quantified and integrated into the demand view long before they impact the supply chain.
- Automated Insights & Communication: Build and maintain automated alerts that instantly communicate missing feeds and forecast anomalies to the right stakeholders. The goal is to catch problems early and prevent downstream operational disruptions before they happen.
- adjustments that improve the demand plan and mitigate operational risks before they escalate.
What you’ll bring: The Ingredients
- Applied SQL (Commercial Experience Required): Confident in writing complex queries (joins, window functions, CTEs) in cloud data platforms. Crucially, you must have proven professional experience applying SQL directly to forecasting models, demand plans, or S&OP data. (Note: Purely academic/bootcamp SQL, or SQL applied without a demand forecasting element, will not be considered).
- Analytical Problem Solving & Attention to Detail: Highly analytical with a proven ability to dive deep into complex datasets. You possess a structured approach to solving ambiguous problems and the meticulous attention to detail required to catch minor errors before they scale into major supply chain costs.
- Visualisation & Storytelling: While you only need intermediate experience building dashboards (e.g., Tableau, Power BI), you must possess strong data storytelling skills—the ability to distill complex data into clear recommendations and present them confidently to decision-makers.
- Excel/Google Sheets: Strong. Used confidently for ad-hoc analysis and stakeholder communication.
- Python: A plus, not a requirement. Willingness to learn or maintain scripts for data manipulation is great.
Above all, we are looking for people who will make HelloFresh better. There are many different ways of developing skills, and we love diverse experiences! So even if you don’t “tick all the boxes” but think you’d thrive in this role, we would really like to learn more about you.
Are you the missing ingredient? If this sounds like a tasty opportunity, we’d be excited to hear from you. We aim to review your profile and respond within 5 business days.
What we offer: The Toppings
- 70% off HelloFresh or Green Chef boxes
- Company pension scheme
- Gym membership
- Bupa private medical insurance (including dental & family cover options)
- Mental health first aiders and an employee assistance programme
- Nursery support scheme
- Cycle to work scheme
- Group Life Assurance
Are you up for the challenge?
Please submit your complete application below including your salary expectations and earliest starting date.