Customer Planning Senior Manager, Creative & Production

Here at the John Lewis Partnership, we are looking for a Customer Planning Senior Manager. For this key role, we are looking for a highly organised individual to take ownership of our non-campaign pipeline.

While our campaign team delivers major promotional activities, this role is the heartbeat of our "always-on" business, ensuring our day-to-day operational creative needs are planned, prioritised, and delivered to the highest standard.

From Visual Merchadising/Point of Sales updates and product packaging to supporting Financial Services and Hospitality, you will be instrumental in ensuring our creative output runs efficiently alongside our main customer plan.

• Salary Band  is £55.500 to £88.500

• Expected salary up to - We are looking for candidates up to £75x depending on the experience you would bring to the  role

• Contract type - This position is a 12-month Secondment/Fixed Term contract 

• Working pattern/flexible working - The Partnership has adopted a hybrid working approach, meaning you'll be able to work a mixture between the office and home-based upon your personal needs, whilst balancing the needs of the business. We typically aim for three days a week in the office for collaboration and attendance at key meetings. 

• Location - This role is based at our London Head Office campus in Pimlico.  

Key responsibilities

In this role, you will lead the end-to-end roadmap for all non-campaign creative activity, managing the intake and governance of diverse requests - ranging from VM/POS updates and packaging design to ad-hoc stakeholder requirements - to ensure they are commercially viable and operationally clear. As the primary interface between the C&P team and key business stakeholders, you will act as a bridge to align operational needs with wider business goals, leading resource planning to balance urgent, reactive requests with scheduled BAU work. By defining and applying a clear prioritisation framework, you will protect core creative capacity while streamlining workflows for high-volume, low-complexity tasks to improve speed-to-market. Furthermore, you will partner closely with the Campaign Planning team to guarantee cross-functional visibility, ensuring that operational activities and major campaigns remain aligned and manageable.

Essential skills/experience you’ll need

• Strong experience in operational planning, project management, or creative operations in a fast-paced environment.

• Proven ability to manage high-volume, "always-on" request pipelines where priorities frequently shift.

• Experience managing stakeholders across multiple business functions (e.g. Product, Retail, Hospitality, Operations).

• A proactive approach to process improvement - identifying ways to simplify workflows for repetitive or operational tasks.

• Exceptional organisational skills with the ability to maintain visibility over multiple concurrent workstreams.

Desirable skills/experience you may have 

• Familiarity with retail, packaging lifecycles, VM (Visual Merchandising), or POS production processes.

• Experience using project management or workflow software to track creative production.

• Strong influencing skills to manage expectations for stakeholders who may not be familiar with creative production cycles.

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We’re the largest employee owned business in the UK and home of our cherished brands, John Lewis and Waitrose. We’re not just employees, we’re Partners, driven by our purpose to build a happier world. As we look to our future, there’s never been a more exciting time to join us.  

We’re ruthlessly focused on being brilliant at retail. We continue to innovate, adapt and diversify. Never Knowingly Undersold on price, quality and service in John Lewis and passionately serving food-lovers in Waitrose.   

As Partners we all share the responsibility of ownership and in its rewards. We use our voices to contribute to our success, working together through the good and challenging times, holding true to our behaviours and treating everyone with kindness and respect. 

We all own making the Partnership somewhere we belong. Embracing our differences and creating an environment where we’re free to be ourselves and can THRIVE. Growing ourselves individually, and as a collective. 

As Partners, we make all the difference. And, we all own it.  

Important points to note:  

It’s important to note that some of our roles are subject to pre-employment vetting (which may include DBS checks for successful candidates). If required, you’ll be informed and provided with information about vetting during the recruitment process and we encourage you to complete any vetting documents quickly to avoid delays. Any DBS checks required will be carried out by a third-party registered body and financial probity checks may also be required for some of our roles.  

We occasionally close vacancies early in the event we receive a high volume of applications, and therefore, we recommend you apply early. If you require a reasonable adjustment due to a disability which means you may need longer to complete your application please contact us as soon as possible.

We want all of our Partners to have a good work-life balance and we support flexible working. This might mean flexible or compressed hours, job sharing or shorter hour contracts, where possible. Please discuss this further with the hiring manager during your interview. 

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