Buyer Team Lead

Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and prioritize work for a team of Buyers supporting multiple geothermal plants, balance workload across routine demand, outages, and capital maintenance projects.
• Serve as escalation point for urgent plant needs, forced outages, and procurement issues; coordinate solutions with Plant teams, Supply Chain/Logistics, Strategic Sourcing, and the Procurement Manager.
• Provide onboarding, SOP guidance, and ongoing training for Buyers; reinforce standard work, internal controls, and best practices.
• Support performance management through KPI tracking, cycle-time/throughput monitoring, and regular coaching/feedback.
• Execute and oversee procurement of MRO materials, critical rotating equipment/spares, and specialty geothermal services (wellfield, turbines, heat exchangers, brine systems, electrical and I&C), including contracted maintenance and outage services.
• Convert requisitions into compliant, accurate Purchase Orders in SAP (S/4HANA), ensuring correct pricing, scope, delivery terms, account assignment, and required documentation.
• Partner with Plant Managers, Maintenance Planners/Schedulers, Reliability Engineers, and Operations to validate requisition quality (scope, urgency, and correct material/service classification) and improve front-end planning inputs.
• Track procurement cycle time and separate procurement lead-time drivers from planning/maintenance delays; remove constraints and improve schedule adherence.
• Support outage planning and quarterly/long-range maintenance look-aheads by surfacing long-lead material/service risks and executing sourcing and expediting plans.
• Ensure buying aligns with approved vendor lists, MSAs, negotiated pricing, and sourcing strategies; prepare and issue RFQs, support competitive bids, and document supplier evaluations as required.
• Cook up with Strategic Sourcing on new vendor onboarding, sole/limited-source justifications, OEM relationships, and long-lead equipment.
• Enforce compliance with insurance and contractor requirements, PO-before-work policies, and audit/internal control standards; ensure complete and accurate procurement file documentation.
• Provide commercial leadership for complex or non-standard procurement matters, including pricing models, contract terms, and total cost of ownership considerations while ensuring cost savings are in focus.
• Lead commercial problem-solving efforts for procurement activities historically managed outside Procurement.
• Identify and address decentralized or maverick spend in partnership with Operations and Maintenance leadership.
• Drive SAP and process discipline (material/service coding, clear PO notes, confirmations, delivery tracking, and timely receiving/GR) to reduce rework and ensure audit-ready documentation.
• Identify process gaps, rework drivers, and automation opportunities; support data accuracy for reporting, audits, cost tracking, and supplier performance management.

Qualifications

Not specified