Accepting applications until: October 14, 2026 at 11:59 PM EST
Location: ELMWOOD PARK, NJ 074070220
Pay Rate: $22.00 - $22.00 Hourly
Position Description
Marketing Co-Op: AI-Powered Forecasting Automation
Department: Marketing Reports To: Marketing Director
Location: Hybrid (Elmwood Park, NJ) or Remote Travel required: N/A
About The Company
Dr. Praeger’s Sensible Foods® was founded in 1994 with the mission to create nutritious and convenient frozen food that tasted so delicious, it would make it easier to help people adopt better eating habits. While the world has changed since the business started, Dr. Praeger’s remains true to its founders’ vision. We’re grounded in using real, recognizable ingredients to make great-tasting products that families love.
We are passionate about food and fueled by our desire to make healthier living more delicious. Our mission is pioneering to increase veggie consumption by making it easy to choose crave-able, veggie-forward food.
Project Overview
As a growing CPG company, we're always looking for practical ways to work smarter and more efficiently and we're now turning to AI to help our teams spend less time wrangling data and more time acting on it.
Today, several of our core forecasting models pull inputs from multiple disparate systems and spreadsheets, spanning retail, club, food service, and distribution channels. This requires significant manual effort to compile, align, and present. As AI tools have matured, we see an opportunity to automate this process, reducing manual data-manipulating so our teams can focus on analysis and decision-making instead of pulling and reconciling data.
This co-op will drive that effort. Partnering closely with Sales, Marketing, Finance, and Production, the co-op will map our current forecasting workflows and design an AI-supported process that consolidates disparate data sources into a single, repeatable model to create one that updates easily as new information comes in, with minimal manual intervention, and converts cleanly into a standardized PowerPoint output for recurring business reviews.
What You'll Do
Meet with stakeholders across Sales, Marketing, Finance, and Production to document current forecasting inputs, data sources, and pain points.
Map the existing manual forecasting workflow end-to-end, identifying where disparate data sources are combined and where errors or delays typically occur.
Design and build an AI-supported process (leveraging tools such as Claude) to consolidate inputs from multiple channels (retail, club, food service, and distribution) into a single, unified forecasting model.
Where useful, apply AI/ML techniques, such as time-series or regression-based methods to improve forecast accuracy beyond what the current manual models achieve.
Develop a repeatable process for updating the model as new data becomes available, minimizing manual re-entry and rework.
Build a simple, repeatable path from the model to a standardized PowerPoint output, so results can be shared consistently without manual reformatting each cycle.
Test the automated model against historical data and current manual outputs to validate accuracy before rollout.
Document the new process clearly so cross-functional teams can maintain and update it after the co-op concludes.
Present progress and final recommendations to Marketing leadership and cross-functional stakeholders.
What You'll Gain
This co-op is designed to give you hands-on, resume-defining experience applying AI tools to a real business problem, not a theoretical exercise. By the end of the term, you will have:
Direct, portfolio-ready experience applying generative AI to automate a real, cross-functional business process.
Exposure to how a CPG company's Sales, Marketing, Finance, and Production teams use data together, experiencing a level of cross-functional visibility uncommon in entry-level roles.
Practical skill-building in data consolidation, forecasting logic, and executive-level presentation of analytical work.
A concrete deliverable in an automated model and reporting workflow that you built and can speak to in future interviews.
Regular check-ins and mentorship from the Director, Marketing, with exposure to senior leadership across the business.
Required
Qualifications
Currently pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Business, Marketing, Statistics, Economics, or a related field, enrolled in a university co-op program.
Hands-on experience using AI tools for analysis or productivity tasks; experience with Claude.ai preferred.
Strong Excel skills, including building and troubleshooting analytical/financial models.
Proficiency in PowerPoint, with the ability to translate analytical output into clear, presentation-ready formats.
Comfortable coordinating with multiple cross-functional stakeholders (Sales, Marketing, Finance, Production) and managing input from each, in a fully remote setting.
Nice to Have
Familiarity with Python or similar data analysis tooling (e.g., pandas), even at a coursework level.
Exposure to forecasting or time-series methods (e.g., regression, trend/seasonality analysis).
Experience building dashboards or other data visualization tools.
Skills & Attributes
Proactivity: Anticipates project needs and brings recommendations proactively, rather than waiting to be asked.
Communication: Translates complex analyses clearly for audiences with varying levels of technical or data fluency.
Self-direction: Comfortable with ambiguity and remote, asynchronous collaboration as this is a build-from-scratch project, not a pre-defined task list.
Curiosity: Genuine curiosity about applying AI to solve practical business problems.
Success Metrics (Illustrative)
Reduction in manual hours required to compile and update forecasting models.
Accuracy of the automated model relative to current manual outputs.
Ease of use for non-technical team members updating the model with new data.
Time saved converting model outputs into presentation-ready PowerPoint decks.
Dr. Praeger’s Sensible Foods is an equal employment opportunity employer. Qualified applicants are considered without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics or other characteristics protected by law.
