We're Hiring: Senior Forecasting Specialist
Location: United Arab Emirates (Remote)
Employment Type: Full-Time
Experience Level: Senior
Work Arrangement: Fully Remote
About UsWe are a globally focused organization committed to improving financial planning, business visibility, operational decision-making, and sustainable performance across diverse markets.
Our Finance, FP&A, Strategy, Commercial, Operations, Supply Chain, and Analytics teams work together to develop reliable forecasts, understand business drivers, identify emerging risks and opportunities, and support informed strategic and operational decisions.
The RoleWe are seeking an experienced Senior Forecasting Specialist to lead financial and business forecasting, forecasting models, scenario analysis, planning assumptions, variance analysis, and forward-looking performance insights.
The ideal candidate will combine strong analytical and modelling capabilities with commercial awareness to develop accurate forecasts, challenge assumptions, identify trends, quantify uncertainty, and provide management with clear insight into expected business performance.
Key Responsibilities
- * Develop and maintain comprehensive forecasting frameworks aligned with organizational planning objectives.
- Lead recurring forecasting cycles across revenue, operating expenses, headcount, cash flow, capital expenditure, and key business metrics.
- Develop short-, medium-, and long-term forecasts as required.
- Build rolling forecasts using historical performance, operational drivers, market conditions, business plans, and management assumptions.
- Develop driver-based forecasting models for revenue, costs, volumes, margins, headcount, cash flow, and other relevant metrics.
- Identify and document the key drivers influencing forecast outcomes.
- Establish standardized forecasting methodologies, assumptions, definitions, and governance processes.
- Coordinate forecast submissions across Finance, Commercial, Operations, Procurement, Human Resources, and other functions.
- Review departmental and business-unit forecasts for completeness, consistency, accuracy, and reasonableness.
- Challenge assumptions and investigate material changes from prior forecasts, budgets, and actual performance.
- Perform detailed actual-versus-forecast analysis and identify the underlying causes of significant variances.
- Track forecast accuracy over time and identify recurring sources of forecasting error.
- Improve forecasting methodologies based on historical forecast performance and business feedback.
- Develop statistical and analytical forecasting models where appropriate.
- Apply time-series analysis, trend analysis, regression techniques, scenario modelling, and other quantitative approaches where relevant.
- Incorporate seasonality, business cycles, market trends, pricing changes, volume assumptions, and operational capacity into forecasts.
- Develop baseline, upside, downside, and stress scenarios for key business drivers.
- Perform sensitivity analysis to determine the impact of changes in major assumptions.
- Quantify forecast uncertainty and identify key assumptions that could materially affect outcomes.
- Conduct forecasting analysis for revenue, sales volumes, customer demand, margins, operating costs, workforce requirements, and capital expenditure.
- Support liquidity and cash-flow forecasting in coordination with Treasury and Finance teams.
- Coordinate with FP&A to integrate forecasts with annual budgets, strategic plans, and long-range financial models.
- Work with Commercial teams to assess pipeline, sales activity, customer demand, pricing, contracts, and revenue expectations.
- Partner with Operations and Supply Chain teams to incorporate capacity, production, inventory, logistics, and service-level drivers.
- Collaborate with Human Resources on headcount, recruitment, compensation, workforce planning, and personnel-cost forecasts.
- Work with Procurement to incorporate supplier costs, contracts, purchasing plans, and expected expenditure into forecasts.
- Develop forecast models for new products, services, markets, projects, and strategic initiatives.
- Support business cases by providing financial forecasts, assumptions, scenarios, and expected outcomes.
- Assess the forecast impact of major business decisions, investments, organizational changes, and operational initiatives.
- Monitor external market indicators and assess their potential impact on business forecasts.
- Evaluate changes in inflation, interest rates, foreign exchange, commodity prices, customer demand, and other relevant economic factors.
- Conduct forecast sensitivity analysis for material external and internal risks.
- Develop early-warning indicators for significant deviations from expected performance.
- Identify emerging financial and operational trends before they materially affect business results.
- Prepare forecasting dashboards and management reports.
- Develop visualizations showing forecast trends, confidence ranges, key drivers, and variance movements.
- Present forecast results, assumptions, risks, and recommendations to senior management.
- Translate complex forecasting outputs into clear business insights and practical recommendations.
- Maintain comprehensive documentation of forecast models, assumptions, methodologies, data sources, and calculation logic.
- Establish appropriate controls over forecasting models, data inputs, assumptions, and model changes.
- Validate forecast data and reconcile key inputs with approved financial and operational sources.
- Improve forecast data quality through standardization, automation, and data integration.
- Identify opportunities to automate forecasting processes and reduce manual planning activities.
- Evaluate forecasting technologies, planning platforms, analytics tools, and predictive capabilities.
- Support implementation and enhancement of FP&A, ERP, business-intelligence, and forecasting systems.
- Conduct periodic back-testing and model-performance reviews.
- Compare forecast outcomes with actual results and recalibrate models where necessary.
- Maintain a centralized library of forecasting models, assumptions, scenarios, and historical forecast results.
- Support management reporting, annual planning, strategic planning, and performance reviews.
- Participate in cross-functional planning and business-review meetings.
- Provide technical guidance and mentoring to junior forecasting and FP&A professionals.
- Promote a culture of data-driven planning, analytical discipline, continuous improvement, and forward-looking decision-making.
Key Performance Indicators
- * Overall forecast accuracy
- Revenue forecast accuracy
- Operating expense forecast accuracy
- Gross margin forecast accuracy
- Cash-flow forecast accuracy
- Headcount forecast accuracy
- Capital expenditure forecast accuracy
- Demand forecast accuracy
- Forecast bias
- Forecast variance
- Forecast error rate
- Forecast cycle completion
- Forecast submission timeliness
- Forecast model reliability
- Forecast assumption accuracy
- Actual-versus-forecast variance resolution
- Rolling forecast effectiveness
- Scenario-analysis completion
- Sensitivity-analysis coverage
- Forecast uncertainty assessment
- Early-warning indicator effectiveness
- Forecast data quality
- Data reconciliation accuracy
- Forecast model validation completion
- Back-testing performance
- Forecast recalibration effectiveness
- Business-driver identification accuracy
- Planning assumption adoption
- Forecast automation rate
- Manual forecasting effort reduction
- Forecast reporting timeliness
- Management reporting accuracy
- Forecast dashboard adoption
- Business-unit forecast compliance
- Cross-functional forecast participation
- Forecast model governance compliance
- Forecasting process efficiency
- Strategic forecast usefulness
- Business decision-support effectiveness
- Forecast-related risk identification
- Forecast improvement initiatives
- Stakeholder satisfaction
Ideal CandidateThe successful candidate should have strong experience in financial forecasting, FP&A, business planning, financial modelling, demand forecasting, business analytics, corporate finance, or quantitative analysis, preferably within a multinational, complex, commercial, technology, industrial, retail, logistics, or service-oriented organization.
The candidate should demonstrate:
