Kraft Heinz

Job Purpose

As a Procurement Manager for External Manufacturing, you will lead all strategic planning and sourcing activities for the assigned categories and related subcategories across the North American Zone (U.S. and Canada). You will leverage your experience and knowledge to build comprehensive strategies at the category level and execute the strategy through the sourcing process. Through effective supplier and contract management, you will drive program compliance, generating value for Kraft Heinz. Your work will drive sustainable strategies that actively seek to reduce and control costs for externally manufactured products while increasing efficiency for the business. The role requires close partnership and collaboration with various stakeholders in various Business Units, Operations, Legal, Finance, Quality, and the Global Procurement team to provide innovative new products and services to meet business objectives. Success in the role requires balancing superior service to internal business clients and global collaboration, all while maximizing value for the company.  

Essential Functions & Responsibilities

• Ability to deeply understand and use procurement processes, tools, and systems to execute and supervise lifecycle management processes. Be a proven expert in category planning, development, and execution, as well as the ability to achieve tangible results in competitive and non-competitive supplier negotiations both directly and as a coach to others.

• Manage mid to executive-level clients and supplier relationships continuously to ensure customer satisfaction.

• Lead sourcing and category management for a wide portfolio of sophisticated and critical categories to Kraft Heinz, including identifying and assessing potential new external manufacturing partners for business viability, including financial, quality, and product manufacturing feasibility.

• Establish and deliver performance goals for a portfolio of categories representing a significant amount of spend.

• Lead strategic sourcing projects for supplier selection/optimization to execute Category Management vision and strategies.

• Manage Supplier Relationships and conduct Supplier Business Reviews, including being the primary point of contact for performance and risk issues.

• As a component of supplier management activities for the role, you will segment suppliers at the category level while developing and managing the supplier base for your categories.

• Lead discussions with critical suppliers around long-term objectives and strategies, ongoing market trends, innovation and technology advances, and potential investment decisions.

• Facilitate supplier collaboration with the assigned set of critical suppliers to leverage their capabilities to achieve continuous improvement and bring innovation to the business.

• Support major supplier issues and work with stakeholders to identify and drive resolution.

• Identify business needs at the sourcing and category project level in the following areas: Assurance of supply, quality, service, cost, and innovation. Develop a multi-year category vision and strategy based on the data, insights, and business requirements.

• Build strong business relationships to increase influence over total category spend.

• Identify and evaluate potential value generating projects based on complexity, resources, risk, time to implement, and estimated financial impact.

• Manage prioritized portfolio of projects for the category in the near and long term.

• Lead the supplier selection and RFx award process.

• Completes sophisticated contracts in accordance with policies and processes; ability to apply competency across categories.

• Actively understand category dynamics (current market, pricing, cost drivers, industry, and supplier variables) through trade groups, publications, etc., and communicate changes to business partners.

• Manage Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and be accountable for measuring and reporting value delivery.

• Enable continuous process improvement and cost reduction.

• Ensure the strategic sourcing process is robustly applied to all sourcing projects.

• Collaborates with global procurement peers to ensure support and alignment.

Expected Experience & Required Skills

• Bachelor's degree in supply chain management, finance, business, or related field. Candidates with extensive proven experience will be considered instead of a degree.

• Possess at least 3 to 5 years of demonstrated ability in Procurement, preferably in external manufacturing procurement, with relevant category expertise. 

• Experience in Supplier Performance and Risk Management tools is helpful.

• Strong written, verbal, and analytical skills and interpersonal and presentation skills.

• Proven project management and solid analytical and consultative skills; able to make sound, data-driven business decisions. Prior experience with case development and multi-workstream project management is critical to success in this role.

• Strong Eye for business with the ability to understand and explain Procurement results and variances to non-Procurement audiences.

• Experience in developing long-term business strategies and confidence when doing so.

• Possesses extensive experience in the sourcing life cycle process and has a strong grasp of the tools needed to complete the process.

• Ability to multi-task, attention to detail, organized, outstanding customer service skills.

• Judgment to handle confidential information and complicated business situations; ability to lead and influence others; project management, problem-solving, leadership, and team building skills.

• Advanced proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook) and an understanding of source-to-pay tools (SAP, Ariba, etc.).