Strategic Procurement Manager - Indirect Categories

Company Description

Join us as a Strategic Procurement Manager and be a key driver of value creation across high-impact indirect categories. Acting as an early and trusted business partner to budget owners and key stakeholders, you will actively shape demand, define strategy, and influence outcomes from day one.

Fully aligned with company and category-specific goals, you will work hand in hand with the business and deploy best-in-class strategic procurement practices and commercial levers to secure transparent, compliant, and highly efficient sourcing of indirect goods and services. In this pivotal role, you will elevate spending, supplier, and contract transparency, embed governance and ESG requirements into core decision-making, and enable seamless end-to-end execution through harmonized processes and the consistent use of leading procurement standards and systems.

Job Description

BUSINESS PARTNERING

You will act as a trusted sparring partner for business leaders on strategic procurement topics, providing insights and recommendations for fact-based decision-making. In this role, you will engage early with budget owners, using commercial methods, scenario comparisons and structured negotiation approaches to optimize value from budgets. Furthermore, you will proactively connect with stakeholders to understand demand, shape procurement approaches at an early stage, and foster effective cross‑functional collaboration. In addition, you will maintain close collaboration with supporting functions (e.g., Finance, Legal) to align procurement plans, priorities and ways of working. Ultimately, you will clearly and consistently communicate procurement’s monetary and non‑monetary value contribution, positioning procurement as a value orchestrator.

CATEGORY MANAGEMENT (PLAN-TO-STRATEGY)

You will conduct market research for indirect products and services, analyzing trends in pricing, availability, lead times, capacity and supplier dynamics to support sound commercial decisions. You will analyze spend by category to identify opportunities and define fact‑based priorities and initiatives. Based on these insights, you will develop, document and continuously improve category strategies that balance cost, value, resilience, innovation and ESG, aligned with business needs. Together with stakeholders, you will drive an annual category strategy refresh and ad‑hoc updates if needed, ensuring aligned roadmaps and transparent initiative pipelines. For large or strategically important initiatives and tenders, you will design and align clear, structured plans to secure the best outcomes for the organization.

STRATEGIC SOURCING & NEGOTIATIONS (SOURCE-TO-CONTRACT)

In this role, you will closely liaise with stakeholders to identify improvement opportunities and align with them on strategic sourcing initiatives and key supplier negotiations. Based on business needs, you will define clear goals, sourcing approaches and negotiation tactics to achieve the best overall value, considering commercial terms, service and quality, risk and sustainability. You will lead or actively participate in tender processes (RFX), cost benchmarks and supplier negotiations, ensuring that all decisions are transparent, auditable and fact‑based. To support this, you will ensure a structured Source‑to‑Contract execution using procurement standards, templates and systems, and you will maintain complete documentation from intake through to award and handover to contract management.

SUPPLIER MANAGEMENT, RISK & PERFORMANCE (SUPPLIER 360°)

You will enable the identification, qualification and onboarding of suitable suppliers in line with internal policies and external requirements, including ESG standards. You will share supplier management practices and guidelines with departments to support effective supplier relationship management across the organization. You will participate in supplier meetings to strengthen relationships and to drive innovation and continuous improvement beyond pure cost savings. Together with key stakeholders, you will establish and run regular supplier performance and risk reviews, contributing to a comprehensive 360° view of relevant suppliers in terms of performance, risk and compliance.

COMPLIANCE, ESG & TRANSPARENCY

You will ensure that environmental, social and governance (ESG) requirements are fully embedded into all procurement activities – from strategic sourcing through to supplier and contract management. You will make sure procurement execution consistently aligns with HQ procurement standards and will actively support governance compliance across all buying activities. Furthermore, you will strengthen spend, supplier and contract transparency for your managed categories: data inputs will be structured and consistent, documentation will be standardized, and reporting/dashboards will be developed and continuously improved in close collaboration with key stakeholders.

Qualifications

Advanced Diploma in Procurement, Supply Chain, Business Administration, or proven long-term experience on the job.

English business fluent, German is a plus.

Min. 4 years of experience in Indirect Procurement.

Proven experience in sourcing and procurement, including. RFX, benchmarking and negotiations.

Solid knowledge of category management and Source‑to‑Contract processes, experience with procurement systems and standards.

Proven ability to apply and explain commercial methods (e.g., TCO, structured negotiations) to enable stakeholder decision‑making.

Experience working within a sustainability framework and reporting.

Advanced Microsoft Office skills (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Teams).

Project management skills; proactive, continuous improvement mindset; entrepreneurial “can-do” attitude.

Excellent communication, negotiation, contracting and influencing skills; ability to operate confidently in a dynamic environment.

Strong stakeholder management and relationship-building skills.

Analytical mindset and structured problem-solving skills; high attention to detail and accuracy.

Additional Information

Due to legal reasons, we are obliged to disclose the minimum salary according to the collective agreement for this position, which is EUR 2.760,00 gross per month. However, our attractive compensation package is based on market-oriented salaries and is therefore significantly above the stated minimum salary.

As an employer, we value diversity and support people in developing their potential and strengths, realizing their ideas and seizing opportunities. We believe passionately that employing a diverse workforce is central to our success. We welcome applications from all members of society irrespective of age, skin colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation or origin.