Category Manager

About this role

Procurement runs sourcing and supplier management across every category the company buys in — from cloud infrastructure to mining consumables.

Own a spend category end to end — software, hardware or professional services: the strategy, the vendors, the negotiation and the savings you can actually evidence.

The categories are genuinely different: a software contract is negotiated on terms, an OTR tyre contract on availability and total cost per hour. Category knowledge is what separates procurement that saves money from procurement that only slows purchasing down.

Primary responsibilities

• Own a spend category — the strategy, the supplier base and the total cost of it
• Consolidate a fragmented supplier base where it makes sense and keep competition where it does not
• Run the major tenders in the category and the negotiations behind them
• Manage supplier performance and the relationship at a senior level
• Track market conditions well enough to time a contract

Skills required

Day to day this role works with Negotiation, Sourcing, Analysis and Category Management.

• Five or more years in strategic sourcing or category management
• Five or more years in procurement with category ownership
• Category strategy and supplier base design
• Major tender and negotiation leadership
• Supplier relationship management at a senior level
• Market knowledge sufficient to time a contract

Preferred

None of these are required. They are the things that would help, and a strong application is regularly missing all of them.