Demand & Capacity Lead

We are seeking a Demand & Capacity Lead to join our team based in Cape Town. This is a contracting role, onsite.

Role purpose

Maintain a credible view of delivery demand and available resources, enabling leaders to prioritise work and resolve capacity constraints. Coordinate resource planning across projects and operational commitments so that delivery plans reflect actual skills, availability and funding.

Key responsibilities

• Establish a consistent demand intake process with sufficient information on scope, value, urgency, dependencies and resource needs.
• Maintain the consolidated resource plan across approved initiatives, pipeline demand and business as usual commitments.
• Work with team and delivery leads to assess skills, allocation, leave, onboarding lead times and realistic productive capacity.
• Produce scenarios showing the effects of reprioritisation, sequencing, recruitment, contracting or changes in scope.
• Facilitate demand and capacity reviews, recording decisions, trade offs and accountable owners for unresolved shortages.
• Track planned against actual allocations, identify double booking and bottlenecks, and update forecasts as delivery changes.
• Improve resource data quality, reporting and planning routines with PMO, finance, HR and vendor management stakeholders.

Essential experience and capabilities

• Demonstrated experience in resource management, capacity planning or delivery demand management across multiple initiatives.
• Ability to model capacity by skill, team and time period, accounting for operational work and realistic availability.
• Experience coordinating competing resource requests with project managers, functional managers and senior stakeholders.
• Strong analytical and reporting capability, including scenario planning and interpretation of allocation and utilisation data.
• Ability to maintain accurate planning records and challenge delivery commitments when the resource assumptions are unsupported.
• Clear communication of choices, constraints and delivery consequences to decision makers.

Preferred experience and capabilities

• Retail technology portfolios, transformation programmes or a complex PMO environment.
• Experience with portfolio or resource planning tools and Power BI or advanced spreadsheet modelling.
• Exposure to contractor demand, resource cost forecasts, supplier capacity and skills development planning.