HR Controlling & Workforce Planning Lead

• Own the end-to-end annual headcount planning cycle (bottom-up and top-down) across all business units and geographies. 
• Build and maintain rolling HC forecasts, translating hiring plans into FTE timelines, onboarding curves, and attrition scenarios. 
• Develop HC planning models that capture growth drivers, productivity assumptions and organizational design changes. 
• Partner with Talent Acquisition to align hiring pipeline data with approved headcount slots and proactively surface risks to senior stakeholders. 
• Own the cost centre set up in close cooperation with Finance from annual budget setting through to monthly actuals management. 
• Maintain and develop the Workforce Cost dashboard in Power BI, ensuring real-time labour cost visibility for sennder Leadership. 
• Own the correct reporting of labour costs in both actuals and forecast dimensions: manage the monthly actuals cycle following payroll run — reconciling payroll outputs with cost centre allocations, validating charges and feeding validated data into Finance reporting. 
• Support the forecast cycle by updating workforce cost projections based on latest actuals, headcount movements, and business changes. 
• Model scenarios for headcount changes, restructuring, compensation adjustments, or business expansion, quantifying the cost impact to support decision-making. 
• Ensure accuracy and consistency of labour cost data between HRIS (HiBob) and Finance tools, proactively identifying and resolving discrepancies. 
• Build clear, actionable reports and dashboards for People Leadership team, Finance and the C-suite, covering cost evolution, budget vs actuals, and forward-looking projections. 
• Consolidate Workforce Cost (WFC) actuals on a monthly basis, ensuring completeness and accuracy of all cost entries and providing a reconciled view to Finance and People Leadership. 
• Drive the Headcount and budget planning process, coordinating bottom-up inputs from business units, aligning with Finance on planning assumptions, and maintaining the HC budget model throughout the year. 
• Manage workforce cost accruals end-to-end: identify accrual needs (e.g. open positions, variable pay, and deferred costs), calculate and post accruals in coordination with Finance, and ensure timely reversal and reconciliation. 

Why this role is exciting?

• Building a scalable, automated Power BI workforce cost reporting framework. 
• Improving HC forecast accuracy. 
• Supporting sennder’s continued European growth with robust headcount scenario planning. 
• Driving data quality and consistency across HRIS and Finance systems. 

• 3+ years of experience in workforce/headcount planning, HR controlling, or People Finance — ideally in a fast-growing tech or logistics company. 
• Proven ability to own a full HC planning cycle, including annual budget, rolling forecast, and reforecast. 
• Strong financial modelling skills; fluent in Excel and Power BI, comfortable building complex, scenario-based models from scratch. 
• Hands-on experience with HRIS and/or FP&A tools (e.g. HiBob, NetSuite,). 
• Experience managing labour cost actuals following payroll run and supporting Finance reporting cycles. 
• Excellent analytical skills: ability to translate large datasets into clear narratives and actionable recommendations. 
• Strong communication skills — able to present complex data to non-technical stakeholders and influence decisions at all levels. 
• Familiarity with SQL or Python for data extraction and automation is a plus. 
• Fluent in English (working language at sennder); Italian is a plus.