About the role:

Samsara is seeking a highly motivated and detail-oriented NPI (New Product Introduction) Demand Planner to join our Worldwide Planning team. The NPI Demand Planner will play a critical role in the successful launch of new products, ensuring seamless transition from older generation hardware to successor generations across all of Samsara’s lines of business. This role will involve collaborating with cross-functional teams such as Hardware Product, Global Operations Engineering, Product Operations, Sales Operations, Strategic Finance, Supply Chain, and Business Operations teams to understand the market expectations, technical program timelines, and go to market strategy to appropriately manage inventory and reduce excess & obsolescence exposure. As an experienced member on the team, you will drive planning strategy, build relationships, and deliver to the business OKRs. This is a highly visible role that offers an opportunity to make business-critical decisions that will impact the customer experience as well as company financials.

This role is open to candidates residing in the US except Alaska, Austin metro, California, Chicago metro, Connecticut, Dallas metro, Denver metro, Houston metro, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Washington, and Washington DC metro.

You should apply if:

• You want to impact the industries that run our world: Your efforts will result in real-world impact—helping to keep the lights on, get food into grocery stores, reduce emissions, and most importantly, ensure workers return home safely.
• You are the architect of your own career: If you put in the work, this role won’t be your last at Samsara. We set up our employees for success and have built a culture that encourages rapid career development, countless opportunities to experiment and master your craft in a hyper growth environment.
• You’re energized by our opportunity: The vision we have to digitize large sectors of the global economy requires your full focus and best efforts to bring forth creative, ambitious ideas for our customers.
• You want to be with the best: At Samsara, we win together, celebrate together and support each other. You will be surrounded by a high-caliber team that will encourage you to do your best. 

Click here to learn about what we value at Samsara. 

In this role, you will: 

• Discern program timelines and risks to generate risk-assessed demand forecasts to achieve company objectives on revenue and cost.
• Serve as subject matter expert and Planning representative in program development meetings to highlight any operational risks in product bring-up or wind down. 
• Collaborate with product development teams to understand the market impact of new products and communicate impacts to other Planners and the broader Operations org.
• Work closely with the procurement team to ensure the availability of required materials for NPI builds and register overall financial liability/exposure of materials risk releases.
• Collaborate with the Global Operations Engineering team on new product manufacturing bring-up and expected supply curve.
• Communicate to leadership regarding overall NPI program health, changes in business trends, and risks & opportunities to the plan of record.
• As needed, generate demand/supply scenarios to evaluate risk profiles and provide recommendations to address potential exposures of stockout or excess inventory to the NPI plan of record.
• Partner with the Hardware PM team to document and update expected product compatibility versions across NPI SKUs and prior hardware generations, incorporating data into the PLM database.
• Analyze, communicate, and monitor the impacts of demand changes to the Supply Chain and Operations teams.
• Provide accountability to the NPI planning processes by reporting performance metrics, improvements, and monitoring historical performance.
• Foster strong relationships with internal stakeholders to ensure effective communication and problem-solving.
• Identify areas for process improvement and efficiency gains within the NPI process.
• Implement best practices and drive continuous improvement initiatives.
• Champion, role model, and embed Samsara’s cultural principles (Focus on Customer Success, Build for the Long Term, Adopt a Growth Mindset, Be Inclusive, Win as a Team) as we scale globally and across new offices.

Minimum requirements for the role:

• Bachelor’s degree in Supply Chain/Operations Management, Business Administration, Engineering, or Economics.
• 8 years (or 6 with Masters) of combined experience in consulting and supply chain planning, product management, demand planning, or business planning.
• Excellent analytical skills with the ability to identify complex problems and clearly lay out solutions with assumptions, risks, and opportunities in logical models.
• Strong project management skills with the ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously. 
• Exceptional communication skills, including the ability to quickly synthesize information in a digestible format for a wide variety of stakeholders across different media.
• Attention to detail while never losing sight of the big picture.
• Proactive, positive approach to problem solving that evolves to support the business.
• Ability to distill ambiguity, changing priorities, and business volatility into a clear action plan and to deliver results.
• Strong understanding of ERP systems, PLM tools, Salesforce, Tableau, Planning Systems (e.g. E2Open).

An ideal candidate also has:

• MBA.
• Programming capabilities (SQL, Python).
• Proven experience in NPI planning, supply chain management, or operations in a technology or manufacturing environment.
• Proficiency in using supply chain management software and tools.
• Knowledge of Lean Six Sigma principles and continuous improvement methodologies.