Regional Category Manager - Real Estate and Building Services

Position Summary

The Regional Category Manager will primarily support the Americas Real Estate and Building Services Category. The position will represent the Procurement Organization both globally and for the Americas Region and shall be responsible for the effective creation and implementation of all the category’s strategic direction and management of the category within the scope of their responsibility (primarily supporting the Real Estate category strategy in managing Thales architectural, general contractors, engineers, building services and office furniture purchases for CAPEX projects, and supplier relationship management).

Key Areas of Responsibility

• Bring procurement acumen, support and influence strategies that drive product and service innovation.
• Provide the best procurement solutions (quality, price and timing), meet customer needs and align with the relevant Procurement Strategies as lead by the Segment Director and the Global Category Managers, ensuring full compliance with all Thales policies and procedures in a hands on, fast paced environment.
• Act as the point of contact (POC) for internal and external stakeholders (e.g., Real Estate, Legal, Finance and suppliers etc.) and determine the priorities for the Category within the region.
• Ensure the relevant players have a good knowledge of Thales needs and support the category strategy so that the business secures targeted projects and customer competitive advantage.
• Ensure that Category, Procurement and Stakeholder Team members adhere to the Thales Group Purchasing policies.
• Maintain clear and measurable savings targets identified and delivered by category and endorsed by business / project.
• Monitor category markets on an on-going basis to identify and understand key players, newcomers, economic evolutions, market or regulation constraints, innovations and technology in order to support the development of the most up-to-date category strategies for the businesses.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in business administration, procurement or comparable field of study with at least 8 years of relevant work experience in procurement or Master’s degree in procurement or business administration or comparable field of study with at least 6 years of relevant work experience in procurement.
• Prior experience developing strategy for a complex procurement organization.
• Understanding Construction and / or real estate pricing structure as well as supplier risk assessments and mitigating planning.
• Prior experience with construction contracts (AIA, CCDC, etc.) or related, complex contracts.
• Ability to create and deploy category strategy to secure short and long term vision of a commodity/ies applying procurement expertise to aid in meeting the same.
• Demonstrated organizational, analytical, problem-solving and strategic thinking skills.
• Prior advanced level experience in Microsoft Office Products (PowerPoint presentations to executives, Excel Macros and VLOOKUP etc.).

Special Position Requirements

• Schedule: Core Business Hours are Monday-Friday. The expectation is that you are working a full eight-hour day, adjusting your scheduled hours of work to accommodate your workload, as well as hours of work to accommodate meetings with partners throughout North America, but also to facilitate effective and timely meetings and communication with the Global partners overseas.
• Physical Environment: This role has been designated as a Hybrid position, with the current expectation that, when you are not traveling, that you will physically work from your assigned Thales office at least two days each week.
• Travel: Travel is required and is anticipated to be approximately 5-15% travel annually, both domestically and internationally.
• Customer Location Based or Site Visits: Position may require occasional travel to and from one or more customer sites.