Director, Indirect Procurement

Supply Chain business expert who manages a team of supply chain professionals and/or people managers for effective and efficient procurement operations, delivering on the Cost, Availability, Quality, and Sustainability objectives of the supply chain. Plans and implements activities related to the timely, cost-effective procurement, supply/demand, and inventory control. May also be responsible for some sourcing activities, in addition to coordinating global procurement efforts.

Key Responsibilities:

Operational Procurement

Own the day-to-day buying engine for indirect spend and hold it to a published service standard. This includes the intake and triage of purchase requests, requisition-to-purchase-order execution, sourcing waivers and competitive-bid thresholds, catalog and preferred-supplier enablement, and the resolution of invoice, receipt, and three-way-match exceptions in partnership with Accounts Payable and Finance.

• Set and manage cycle-time, quality, and compliance targets for the requisition-to-order process, and publish performance against them on a regular cadence to business partners and finance leadership.
• Govern the procurement policy for indirect spend: approval hierarchies, delegation of authority, competitive-bid and single-source justification rules, and the controls that keep spend on contract and off maverick channels.
• Own the procurement systems and data used to transact indirect spend, including catalogs, supplier master data, item and category taxonomy, and the reporting layer that makes spend visible by category, business unit, and supplier.
• Manage supplier onboarding and qualification end-to-end, including due diligence, risk screening, tax and banking validation, and supplier information maintenance, so a qualified supplier is ready before the business needs to transact.
• Partner with Finance on budget alignment, purchase-order accruals, and month-end and quarter-end close activities that depend on procurement data.
Strategic Sourcing of Indirect Categories

Build and own multi-year category strategies across the indirect portfolio, grounded in spend analytics, market intelligence, demand forecasts, and total cost of ownership rather than unit price alone. Each strategy should name the sourcing approach, the target supplier base, the commercial model, the savings thesis, and the risks that would change the plan.

• Lead complex competitive sourcing events from market scan and RFI through RFP, bid analysis, should-cost modeling, negotiation, and award, including the executive readouts that support the award decision.
• Negotiate and steward the contract portfolio with Legal, including master services agreements, statements of work, license and subscription terms, rate cards, rebates, volume tiers, and renewal and termination rights, and build the renewal calendar that prevents auto-renewals from passing unexamined.
• Own the annual savings plan for indirect spend: set targets by category, maintain a pipeline of initiatives, and validate delivered savings and cost avoidance with Finance so reported results survive scrutiny.
• Run supplier relationship management for strategic and critical indirect suppliers, including segmentation, scorecards, quarterly business reviews, performance improvement plans, and joint innovation or productivity commitments.
• Manage commercial and supply risk across the portfolio, including concentration, financial health, cybersecurity and data protection, business continuity, regulatory and trade compliance, and responsible-sourcing expectations, and embed those requirements into qualification and contract terms.
Category Scope

The indirect portfolio spans the following category families. Specific category ownership is assigned across the team and reviewed annually as spend and business priorities shift.

Professional Services

• Consulting
• Engineering services
• Staffing and contingent labor
• Audit support
• HR and benefits services
• Training
• Printing and office services
IT and Software

• Enterprise software and SaaS subscriptions
• Cloud and data center services
• Hardware
• Telecom
Facilities and Real Estate

• Leases
• Construction and fit-out
• Maintenance
• Utilities
• Security
• Janitorial services
MRO and Lab Operations

• Maintenance, repair, and operating supplies
• Lab consumables and equipment services
• Calibration
Marketing and Travel

• Agency and media services
• Events and trade shows
• Travel
• Fleet and corporate card programs
Logistics and Corporate Services

• Freight and warehousing support
Leadership and Organizational Development

Lead and develop a distributed team of directors, strategic sourcing leads, and contingent specialists. Set clear category and initiative ownership, coach negotiation and category-management capability, manage performance and succession, and build a bench deep enough that critical categories are never single-threaded. Shape the resourcing model across employees and contingent workers, and make the case for investment where capacity constrains value delivery.

Stakeholder Engagement and Governance

Act as the senior procurement partner to business-unit and functional leaders, engaging early enough in the planning cycle to influence demand and specifications rather than arriving after a supplier has been chosen.

Represent indirect procurement in executive forums, present category strategies and savings performance to senior leadership, and chair the governance reviews where sourcing decisions, exceptions, and supplier escalations are settled.

Partner with Legal, Finance, IT, Information Security, HR, and Environmental, Health and Safety so that policy, risk, and control requirements are designed into sourcing rather than bolted on afterward.

Department: Global Operations
Function: Other
Experience Level: Not Applicable