Planner, Product Planning

About the position

The Product Planning team works on the realization of next generation of vehicles for Nissan North America. This involves working from a vehicle concept to create a tangible output to market, and in-market support in order to ensure the achievement of North American sales and profit goals. As a member of the RPM team, the Product Planner guides and manages programs through the planning and lifecycle phases through a product’s life. This is a collaborative position that interfaces with NML, Design, Engineering, Marketing, & Manufacturing. By leveraging their skills, experience and learnings from both their team and customer, the ideal Planner is one who can handle work autonomously while being accountable for their high-quality output and consistent evolution as they grow to be a key member of the organization. As a Product Planner, you will support development of product plans and strategies in cooperation with affiliates based upon consumer, product and market data analysis; initiate changes to these plans and strategies as necessary to ensure appropriateness, given changes in the market environment and/or corporate objectives. Candidates should be flexible multi-taskers with a passion to understand customers and have a general understanding of fundamental US customer automotive motivations, the US market, and the overall Nissan Marketing & Sales business model. In addition, they should possess strong creative and analytical skills and be driven to deliver high quality results where accuracy must be assured.

Responsibilities

• Perform data mining and analysis to extract focused customer insights to deeply understand the market and customer
• Creates robust proposals using storytelling with clear, data driven, and compelling proposals to drive decision-making
• Create a compelling product concept and/or Strategic Platform planning that capitalizes on macro trends & unmet customer needs by incorporating Nissan Brand intention Vehicle expression Strategic advantage Overall future competitiveness
• Develops volume and MSRP proposals for future products based on competitive and consumer market trends
• Collaborates with other teams, departments and regions/locations to appropriately support Product Planning within various points of the process; in this case - upstream development of assigned projects
• Participate in multiple nighttime meetings each week with global counterparts to advance priorities and resolve open issues
• Maintain detailed knowledge of assigned vehicle(s) and competitive set
• Review PR and Marketing materials for accuracy
• Support development of grade strategies and specifications
• As necessary, performs other related duties of which the above are representative

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree from an accredited university
• 3 years of experience in a related area (work must include broad base of analytical aptitude in utilizing historical, statistical, and empirical data in the automotive sector)
• Experience in creating clear and compelling data-driven presentations using Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint (tables & charts, pivot tables, VLOOKUP, SUM & IF functions).
• Work must include broad base of analytical aptitude in utilizing historical, statistical, and empirical data
• Must be proficient at proposal storytelling, by developing a robust, clear, data driven and compelling proposal.
• Strong understanding of total Product Planning lifecycle

Nice-to-haves

• Experience working in cross-functional and cross-cultural teams is highly desired, and a willingness and interest to do so is necessary.
• Experience using and analyzing syndicated automotive marketing data sources strongly preferred – examples include AutoKnowledge, Autoplanner, S&P Catalyst, JD Power PIN, mTAB, Strategic Vision NVES.
• Excellent interpersonal, listening, negotiating, and communication skills.

Benefits

• medical
• mental health
• parental leave
• retirement savings
• discounts on lease vehicles
• Vehicle Purchase Program (VPP)