Procurement Category Manager

Procurement Category Manager

Materialise

Leuven, Belgium

We are seeking a highly motivated and experienced Procurement Category Manager to join our Global Procurement team. In this role, you will be responsible for strategic sourcing projects and negotiations that align with our business objectives, ensuring the efficient sourcing of high-tech products and services.

Job description

This role requires excellent procurement and interpersonal skills, enabling you to shift between spending categories and projects while maintaining strong relationships with our strategic suppliers and internal stakeholders, and ensuring the deliverables are met. As Procurement Category Manager, you will also get the opportunity to help build a strong, future-proof Global Procurement organization.

What you will do

• Category management — develop, communicate, and create buy-in for your global and regional category strategies. The categories will encompass a broad spectrum of spend, both indirect (medical lab studies, R&D, sales and marketing, insurance) and direct (medical Subco, distributed medical instruments, …) to support various industries, including healthcare, aerospace, medtech, research, and academia
• Stakeholder management — partner with our medical business unit and staff departments such as marketing, finance, legal, HR, and IT to understand current and future business needs
• Strategic sourcing — execute and manage the category strategies, considering the procurement policies/process flows and business objectives
• Build strong supplier relations to ensure standards for quality, delivery, and performance, and manage a network of reliable value-added suppliers via KPIs
• Negotiate the best purchasing price, integrating the total cost of ownership, service requirements, compliance, and quality specifications
• Set up and perform data analysis on your categories to analyze cost drivers, understand category markets, and identify best practices
• Recognize potential cost optimizations, taking into account TCO, standardization opportunities, and risk management
• Contract governance — negotiate and implement contracts and service level agreements, driving commercial and operational objectives
• This role reports to the Global Procurement Director and provides coaching to the category buyers in the team

Your profile

• Master’s degree with a proven track record in procurement at a global level
• You like working on both strategic and tactical levels and are experienced in category management, supplier relationships, and contract management
• You enjoy working on a wide variety of indirect and direct spend categories and projects
• You are an ambassador for the procurement organization, generating overall cost awareness and supplier engagement, and you help educate business partners in procurement processes and procedures
• You are well aware of the mechanisms of supply chain management and the role of procurement in the E2E supply chain process
• Procurement process development and implementation skills. You take initiative if you come across room for standardization in procurement processes on a local/regional/global level
• Solid experience in procurement negotiation, project management, sourcing, and cost analysis processes
• Analytical and financial capabilities to analyze and interpret data and turn it into insights
• Strategic negotiation skills and an understanding of cost-driving elements
• Experienced in stakeholder management across multiple business units and regions
• Strong communication skills
• Flexible and a hands-on mentality
• Fluent spoken and written English