Category Manager

Responsibilities

• Define and execute a sourcing strategy for one or more complex purchasing categories within datacenter critical environment equipment maintenance and services to ensure optimal costs and a sufficient continuity of supplies.
• Share industry and category expertise across stakeholder teams to develop and execute sourcing strategies.
• Incorporate business specifications into sourcing events, define and manage supplier scorecard criteria, coordinate performance reviews, and drive corrective actions.
• Manage contract and pricing negotiations for a single purchasing category.
• Influence senior managers, adopt practices, and apply market intelligence to enable quality execution, while educating stakeholders to ensure compliance, adapting policy as needed to mitigate risk.
• Drive consistency, timeliness, and quality of deliverables, ensuring stakeholders are aware of Service Level Agreements.
• Process or support stakeholder procurement requests for CE equipment maintenance and services via engagement.
• Execute contracts and comply with established control processes, identifying roadblocks and taking action to resolve them as needed.
• Develop pricing and negotiation strategies, gain senior executive support, and mitigate contract disagreements.
• Drive early business engagements for complex business areas and collaborate with suppliers and leads on onboarding processes.

Qualifications

• Master's Degree in Engineering, Supply Chain, Data Analytics, Business, Finance or related field AND 3+ years experience in data science/analytics, finance, project management, supply chain, and/or operation
• Or Bachelor's Degree in Engineering, Supply Chain, Data Analytics, Business, Finance or related field AND 4+ years experience in data science/analytics, finance, project management, supply chain, and/or operations
• Or equivalent experience
• Strong commercial understanding and experience driving and developing contracts on key categories (General Contractors, Mechanical & Electrical Equipment, Power Generation, Construction Services, Operations Services).
• Experience of collaborating with key stakeholders to jointly develop and implement category strategies to drive efficiencies, improve performance delivery and reduce costs.
• Experience of developing and enhancing supplier relationships.
• Data driven mindset to support continuous improvement and accurate reporting.
• Growth mindset to explore new technologies, new ways of working and new contracting methods.
• Knowledge of data center industry and experience managing a variety of project delivery methods - ability to lead a project team in defining risk and developing the appropriate contracting and compensation approach.
• Technical ability to write contracts, ability to set up sourcing plans and negotiation strategies and execute them.
• Excellent communicator that can interact with diverse groups across organizational levels.
• Familiarity with common process improvement methodologies (Lean, Six-Sigma, etc.) and ability to facilitate change management.
• Able to implement new processes and get buy in from a cross functional team.
• Category Management experience in one or more key categories including General Contractors, Mechanical & Electrical Equipment, Construction Services, Operations Services.
• Skilled project management experience plus exceptional communication and influencing skills.
• Experience with Global and regional planning and development.