Data Analyst (Demand Planning)

takealot.com, South Africa's leading online retailer, is looking for a highly talented Trade Strategist (Demand Planning) to join our team in Cape Town.

The role is to support the Trade Optimisation team by delivering data-driven insights, analytical models, and strategic recommendations that improve business performance across key commercial levers such as pricing, promotions, forecasting, and portfolio/channel optimization.

We are a young, dynamic, hyper growth company looking for smart, creative, hard-working people with integrity to join us. We offer a market related, Total Remuneration Package which allows full flexibility according to your needs, a great work environment and a promise that you won’t be bored as long as you are prepared for a challenge and want to build something great.

This position reports to the Head of Trade Optimization

Your responsibilities will include:

• Analyze complex datasets to identify opportunities for improvement in your functional area.
• Build, validate, and maintain models to guide commercial decisions.
• Partner cross-functionally with Retail, Marketplace, Supply Chain, Promotions, Product, and other stakeholders to influence outcomes.
• Continuously improve tools, dashboards, and workflows that enable scalable analysis and performance monitoring.
• Translate business problems into structured analytical approaches and clearly communicate insights to non-technical audiences.
• Take ownership of initiatives, follow through on delivery, and adapt quickly to changing business priorities.
• Ability to deliver under deadlines and adapt to changing priorities.
• Strong leadership potential — capable of influencing and mentoring others.
• Committed to excellence and continuous improvement.
• Adopts and leverages AI in their daily tasks to improve their efficiency.
• Analyze list price structures to optimize margins while remaining competitive.
• Develop models that guide base pricing decisions across products and categories.
• Identify patterns in pricing elasticity and suggest price repositioning.

Qualification & Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree (minimum) in a quantitative field such as Engineering, Data Science, Mathematics, Computer Science, Statistics, or Economics.
• Additional postgraduate studies preferred.
• 3–5 years of experience in data analytics or a relevant quantitative function.
• Functional domain experience related to the role (e.g., pricing, promotions, demand planning, retail channel).
• Exposure to online or traditional retail environments is highly preferred.
• Management consulting experience is advantageous.

Attributes Required:

• Advanced Excel skills.
• Proficiency in SQL (Postgres, BigQuery).
• Experience using KNIME, R, or Python for data analysis and modelling.
• Ability to work with large datasets and interpret results meaningfully.
• Understanding of retail dynamics and levers of commercial performance.
• Experience collaborating across cross-functional teams.
• Excellent quantitative and analytical ability.
• Strong problem-solving skills and creative thinking.
• Self-motivated, driven, and able to work independently.
• High personal accountability and ownership mindset.
• Strong communication skills — able to defend your point of view, but humble in the face of better arguments.

The Environment: 

• takealot.com employees are entrepreneurial and dynamic, smart, customer- centric, fun and have the shared ambition of takealot.com being the leading e- commerce company in Africa. 
• We have fun, work hard, take ownership, work in teams to create solutions, and are always open to direct feedback/new ideas on where we can improve. 
• We are short on ego and high on output. 
• We are doers and not only thinkers, its all in the execution after all. 
• We love what we do and what we are creating.
• We seek to employ an Extra Ordinary Mind who is Smart, has Integrity, and is Hardworking. 

If you meet the above you are an Extraordinary Mind so come and join us! 

Takealot Group is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We encourage applicants from the previously disadvantaged groups and people with disabilities, to apply.