Director of Planning

Pepper; United States; Remote; USD 150,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

401(k) matching up to 3%

Generous paid time off

Parental leave

Wellness stipend

Annual company offsite

Product discounts

Remote work stipend

Job summary

Pepper is seeking a strategic and data-driven Director of Planning to own inventory planning, purchasing, and sales planning end to end. You will drive forecasting methodology, buy processes, S&OP cadence, and reporting to surface risks early.

In this role, you will analyze SKU and size-level performance, customer behavior, lead times, and supply risk while collaborating with Product, Marketing, Finance, and Operations to guide where to invest and how much risk to take.

Qualifications

• 8-12+ years of inventory planning experience with career progression and profit optimization.
• Direct experience in DTC or apparel/intricates with end-to-end inventory ownership.
• Strong understanding of size curves, replenishment, lifecycle planning, and inventory optimization.

Responsibilities

• Build bottom-up SKU- and size-level forecasts for launches and replenishment.
• Translate forecasts into buy plans and vendor production plans balancing in-stock rate, cost, and cash.
• Own risk analysis, scenario planning, and forecast accuracy metrics.
• Lead S&OP process and align cross-functional teams on inventory investment and capacity.
• Create dashboards and reporting on forecast accuracy, fill rate, turns, and stockouts.

Skills

Inventory planning

Forecasting

S&OP

Dashboard reporting

Cross-functional leadership

Analytical skills

Financial modeling

Vendor & buy planning

Tools

Planning systems

Job description

Nice to meet you!

Pepper is an innovative, fast-growing DTC intimate apparel brand created to celebrate small-chested women. Our iconic, solution-driven bras, swimwear, and apparel are thoughtfully designed to make every moment and outfit a confident and authentic expression of your best self. Pepper has been obsessed with uncompromising fit for small chests since 2017, with our 470% funded Kickstarter launch. Today, Pepper has grown into a global community of millions of women, united by the belief that women deserve to feel perfectly enough exactly as they are. We’re reshaping the conversation around fit, style, and confidence for small-chested bodies everywhere. Come join the movement!

What we’re proud of:

• Remote-first, flexible, and human: We’re a fully remote-first team that values autonomy, balance, and trust. Pepper is built for people who want to do their best work from wherever they thrive. Without sacrificing connection, collaboration, or career growth.
• Women-founded & Self-funded: As a women-owned company that never took traditional VC funding, we’ve scaled to eight-figure revenue through focus, creativity, and scrappiness. People come here to help rewrite what success looks like in DTC, and to build alongside a team that loves breaking the “rules” of how startups should grow.
• Mission-driven with real impact: Everything we do is rooted in empowering small-chested people to feel confident and celebrated. Our mission shapes our products, our culture, and our decisions, from inclusive design to responsible manufacturing and community giving. Joining Pepper means using your work to make the world a little more comfortable, confident, and kind.

This is where you come in.

We're looking for a strategic and data-driven Director of Planning to own inventory planning, purchasing, and sales planning end to end. This is a chance to build the planning function that gets us to our next stage of growth: the forecasting methodology, the buy process, the S&OP cadence, and the reporting that lets leadership see risk early.

In this role, you'll move fluently between detail and strategy, digging into SKU and size-level performance, customer behavior, trend patterns, lead times, and supply risk. You'll work across Product, Marketing, Finance and Operations to answer the questions that shape our business: which categories deserve the biggest bets, where we're exposed, and how much risk we can afford to take.

Key Responsibilities:

Planning & Inventory Management

• Build bottom-up forecasts at the SKU, color, and size level across seasonal launches, core replenishment, and new category expansion, with methodology that handles how products actually behave: launch ramps, replenishment curves, cannibalization, and demand decay
• Partner with Marketing and Merchandising to build comprehensive goals and buys to support promotional activity, launches, and acquisition trends
• Translate forecasts into buy plans and vendor production plans that balance in-stock rates, inventory productivity, cost, and cash, and set the targets that govern them: weeks of supply, safety stock, reorder points, and inventory health by category
• Own the risk work — scenario and contingency planning inside real constraints like capacity, lead times, and MOQs — and establish forecast accuracy as a key metric that improves over time
• Partner with Merchandising on assortment architecture: how wide we go, how deep we buy, which styles carry the business and which are there to round out the line
• Own size curve strategy across categories, which is uniquely consequential in a business built on fit
• Align inventory to product lifecycle from launch through growth, replenishment, and markdown
• Allocate inventory across DTC, marketplaces, Amazon, and wholesale based on channel demand and unit economics, including return rates

S&OP & Cross-Functional Leadership

• Design and run our S&OP process, aligning inventory efficiency, product sales forecasting by style, and inventory health and turn
• Act as the connective tissue between Marketing, Design, Merchandising, Finance, Production, and Sourcing, and bring clear recommendations to executive discussions on inventory investment, capacity, and risk
• Build the dashboards and reporting that make the business legible: forecast accuracy, fill rate, inventory turns, stockouts, excess inventory, and service levels
• Act as a strategic thought partner to executive leadership on inventory investment, capacity planning, growth opportunities, and operational risk

Key Success Metrics

• Sales and unit forecast accuracy
• In-stock rate and fill rate
• Inventory turnover
• Weeks of supply
• Gross margin impact
• Stockout and excess inventory reduction

What we're looking for.

• 8-12+ years of inventory planning experience displaying career progression, leadership and profit optimization
• Must have experience in DTC or vertically designed products with end-to-end inventory planning ownership for apparel, intimates, or other size intensive consumer products
• Strong understanding of apparel planning fundamentals including size curves, replenishment models, lifecycle planning, and inventory optimization
• Advanced analytical and financial modeling skills; experience with planning systems is preferred
• Strong leadership, communication, and cross-functional collaboration capabilities
• Proven track record of building scalable planning processes in high-growth environments preferred

The perks.

• Robust health benefits including 100% company covered option for medical, vision, dental insurance, and supplemental insurance options
• Company matched 401K plan up to 3%
• Generous paid time off program including flexible PTO days, federal holidays, and sick days
• Paid parental leave for qualifying employees
• Monthly wellness stipend
• Annual company-wide offsite
• Have a huge role in the growth of a company with a meaningful mission
• Curiosity : We’re relentless in our quest to understand the community we serve. We’re challengers who ask questions, pursue perspectives, and set the new standard.
• Resilience : We embrace the ups and the downs, learn from our mistakes, and courageously persevere to achieve our goals.
• Community : We champion each other the same way we champion our customer. We do big things together and are passionate about what we do, and how we do it.

Diversity

Pepper is an equal opportunity employer and makes employment decisions on the basis of merit. Pepper's policy prohibits unlawful discrimination based on race, color, religious creed, sex, gender identity, marital or veteran status, age, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information or characteristics (or those of a family member), sexual orientation, pregnancy, or any other consideration made unlawful by federal, state, or local laws. It also prohibits discrimination based on a perception that anyone has any of those characteristics, or is associated with a person who has or is perceived as having any of those characteristics. All such discrimination is unlawful. Pepper will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal history, including arrest and conviction records, in accordance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.

What Personal Information We Collect

Professional, employment-related, or schooling information. Current or past job history, performance evaluations, and educational background, including grades and transcripts.

How We Use Your Information

For professional, internal analysis, or employment-related purposes, including job applications.

The expected salary for this role is $150,000 - $180,000, though the final offer will reflect several factors such as your experience, skills, and the role’s location and may be outside of this number. Candidates should expect offers that reflect their individual qualifications, experience, and location. The salary provided is directional and actual compensation may vary. At Pepper, we know that compensation is just one part of the package. That’s why we offer a robust total rewards package, including health and wellness benefits, remote work stipends, a generous flexible paid time off policy, product discounts, and more, that are designed to support your journey both inside and outside of work.