Senior Specialist, Category Management (Operations)

Responsibilities

• Supports the Sourcing and Contracting of a portfolio of contracts.
• Integrates and works collaboratively with business partners in the delegated categories.
• Drives compliance, continuous improvement, and value delivery.
• Engages with Supplier Assurance, Purchasing Delivery team, and business partners to deliver strategies to meet business needs and supply market capability.
• Manages direct Contract Agreement Negotiations working with Legal, Insurance, Treasury and Risk Management functions.

Essential Duties

• Stakeholder Management: Collaborates with business partners to assure their way-of-working is compliant with company compliance, ethics, and delegated authorities. Leverages Cheniere’s scale to coordinate business needs with suppliers. Acts as the single point of accountability for all spend against their delegated contracts. Supports the Contract Owners in the gathering of performance feedback for effective contractor management. Supports the delivery of Category Strategies as appropriate to the delegated contracts.
• Category Strategy and Implementation: In collaboration with Category Manager, lead the development and implementation of comprehensive Category Strategies for defined categories. Sourcing, Contracting, and Contract Management: Performs pre-qualification and qualification of new suppliers. Ensures all Sourcing and Contracting is compliant, timely and delivered with quality. Builds and designs requests for proposal to consider total cost models to understand value, operating costs, and supplier price impacts on existing budgets. Performs negotiations to establish contracts with qualified suppliers to secure quality services, materials, and equipment on time at optimum cost. Prepares bid evaluation and supplier award documentation for business partner approvals. Drafts, evaluates, negotiates, and executes various contract commercial structures. Ensures timely delivery of quality contracts in support of safe, reliable, and competitive operations. Ensures contractual records and documentation and contract correspondence maintained and logged into the appropriate systems. Supports the Delivery Purchasing team in the creation of Contract Purchase Agreements (CPA’s) and Blanket Purchase Agreements (BPA’s) as appropriate. Manage Post Award Contract Management process inclusive of contract handover, supplier performance management while ensuring adherence to commercial assurance.
• Process Efficiency and Data Analytics: Develops expertise in the teams GEP sourcing and contracting solution to become team’s lead Power User. Integrates data from various sources to perform in-depth analytics on procurement processes, identifying trends and insights. Works with the SCM COE to define areas for improvement within category management practices. Leads change management efforts to implement new ways of working, ensuring smooth transitions and user adoption. Utilize data analysis and reporting tools to track and evaluate contract and category management performance metrics. Create clear and concise visual representations of data findings from collaborating with COE, Commercial and Delivery team to facilitate decision-making and communication. Facilitate knowledge sharing within Commercial team by documenting best practices and lessons learned.

Knowledge and Skills

• A strong understanding of sourcing, commercial terms, and negotiation of general material and service contract provisions.
• Understanding of source-to-contract and purchase to pay systems (Oracle and GEP system experience preferred).
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Self-motivated and ability to handle multiple responsibilities.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to work well cross-functionally with all internal stakeholders.
• Strong interpersonal skills; ability to thrive in a dynamic and fast-paced environment.
• Effective time management skills.
• Ability to think strategically and demonstrate strong attention to detail.

Education and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree preferred.
• Minimum five (5) years of relevant, progressive Supply Chain Management experience.