Sales & Operations Planning Manager

The Opportunity:

Manages a team of planning analysts and/or supervisors with a focus on setting tactical objectives and operational plans that directly impact short-term supply chain performance. Leads planning activities across demand forecasting, supply planning, and inventory optimization, ensuring alignment with broader business and supply chain strategies. Develops and refines planning processes, tools, and standards to improve service levels, inventory health, and cost-to-serve. Applies best practices and cross-functional insights to address planning challenges that involve collaboration with manufacturing, procurement, finance, and commercial partners. Analyzes complex planning scenarios requiring input from multiple disciplines, and guides the team in evaluating trade-offs across service, cost, and risk. Interacts regularly with senior leadership to provide insight into planning performance, supply risks, and business impacts, and plays a key role in cross-functional initiatives such as S&OP or product lifecycle transitions. Effectively influences stakeholders in high-impact or ambiguous situations, balancing competing priorities while maintaining collaborative relationships across the organization and with external partners. POSITION PROFILE: (Basic Purpose of Position)

The S&OP Manager, based in Avantor's Pune, India office, leads the offshore supply chain planning support team that enables Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) and Sales and Operations Execution (S&OE) routines. The role manages team delivery, analytics, governance, master data support, performance reporting, and decision-support capabilities that help onshore global S&OP and regional stakeholders execute those routines effectively. This position partners with global and regional planning, operations, finance, commercial, procurement, quality, product management, IT, and other cross-functional leaders to translate business priorities into clear team deliverables, improve planning visibility, strengthen process discipline, and support decisions that balance customer service (OTIF/backorder), manufacturing effectiveness, inventory investment, capacity utilization, cost, and shelf-life risk.

MAJOR JOB DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: (List in order of importance)

Global Business Partnering and Stakeholder Management

• Serve as the Pune-based business partner for onshore and regional S&OP/S&OE stakeholders across planning, operations, commercial, procurement, finance, quality, product management, IT, and manufacturing teams.