Position Summary

The Global Category Director will be the enterprise leader responsible for developing and executing the global sourcing and supplier strategy for an assigned strategic spend category or spend tower across JENNMAR and its affiliated businesses.

The Director will manage the category as a business, with accountability for total cost, savings and purchase price performance, value analysis/value engineering (VAVE), supplier strategy, risk, contracts, payment terms and working capital, supplier performance, spend under management, and continuous improvement.

The role will establish the enterprise category strategy, commercial framework, preferred supplier structure, and performance expectations while partnering closely with regional and local teams on execution. The Director will work with Operations, Engineering, Quality, Finance, Sales, Supply Chain, Logistics, Legal, and business-unit leadership to establish category strategies that support growth, margin improvement, customer service, operational continuity, and product competitiveness.

The Global Category Director will have responsibility for potential annual spend between $100M and $350M across five major operating regions. Potential categories are Steel, Poly-Chem & Powders, Components, MRO, and SEPS (Safety, Equipment, Packaging, Services). The role will be expected to build a multi-year category roadmap and deliver measurable EBITDA, cash flow, risk reduction, and operational benefits.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and execute a global category strategy aligned with JENNMAR's business plans, growth priorities, margin objectives, working-capital goals, technical requirements, and supply-continuity needs.
• Establish a fact-based spend baseline covering suppliers, plants, business units, regions, specifications, volumes, pricing, payment terms, contracts, market indices, and demand forecasts.
• Segment category spend into logical commodities and subcategories and determine the appropriate sourcing and supplier-management strategy for each.
• Own the strategic sourcing process for the category, including market analysis, RFIs/RFQs, competitive bidding, supplier negotiations, contracting, award recommendations, implementation, and savings validation.
• Create and maintain a global supplier strategy that defines preferred suppliers, strategic suppliers, development suppliers, alternate sources, and suppliers targeted for consolidation or exit.
• Drive measurable cost and EBITDA improvement through competitive sourcing, supplier consolidation, specification rationalization, should-cost analysis, index management, demand management, localization, make-versus-buy analysis, and total-cost optimization.
• Build and lead a formal VAVE pipeline with Engineering, Operations, Quality, and suppliers to identify material substitutions, design simplification, specification changes, part consolidation, manufacturing-process improvements, and other structural cost-reduction opportunities.
• Own category purchase price performance and provide clear visibility to PPV, budget variance, forecast variance, market variance, inflation/deflation, productivity, and realized savings.
• Develop commodity and market intelligence for relevant materials and services, including supply-demand conditions, cost drivers, indices, capacity, trade actions, tariffs, geographic risks, and supplier economics.
• Translate market intelligence into forward-looking sourcing, negotiation, contracting, and risk-mitigation strategies, including recommendations on contract duration, index mechanisms, timing, and supplier commitments.
• Develop cost models and should-cost analyses that separate material, conversion, labor, overhead, freight, duties, tariffs, and supplier margin to strengthen commercial decisions and negotiations.
• Partner with Finance to establish savings baselines, validate benefits, distinguish recurring from one-time savings, and ensure procurement results are reflected appropriately in budgets, forecasts, and financial reporting.
• Improve working capital through payment-term optimization, inventory strategies, consignment, vendor-managed inventory, lead-time reduction, MOQ rationalization, and other supplier-commercial initiatives.
• Establish and maintain appropriate contract coverage, including pricing mechanisms, index formulas, payment terms, service levels, warranties, liability provisions, intellectual-property protections, capacity commitments, and business-continuity requirements.
• Lead supplier risk management for the category, including single-source exposure, financial risk, geographic concentration, capacity constraints, quality risk, geopolitical exposure, cybersecurity or compliance concerns where applicable, and continuity planning.
• Develop dual-source, alternate-source, safety-stock, tooling, capacity-reservation, or other mitigation strategies for critical materials and suppliers where business risk warrants.
• Establish qualified alternate-source strategies for critical materials and eliminate or actively mitigate unacceptable single-source dependencies, with clear readiness, qualification, tooling, capacity, and implementation plans.
• Establish supplier scorecards and business-review processes covering quality, delivery, cost, service, innovation, responsiveness, capacity, sustainability where relevant, and continuous improvement.
• Lead strategic supplier relationships and executive business reviews, including joint productivity roadmaps, capacity planning, technology collaboration, quality improvement, and innovation.
• Partner with Operations and Supply Chain to align sourcing strategies with production plans, inventory requirements, lead times, customer commitments, and manufacturing-footprint decisions.
• Partner with Engineering and Quality on supplier qualification, specification changes, new-product introduction, VAVE, supplier development, and technical problem resolution.
• Partner with Logistics to optimize freight terms, sourcing geography, shipment economics, Incoterms, inbound transportation, packaging, and total landed cost.
• Support acquisition diligence and integration by evaluating category spend, supplier contracts, sourcing risks, pricing, synergies, supplier overlap, and consolidation opportunities.
• Establish a category dashboard and operating-review cadence covering spend, savings, PPV, VAVE, supplier concentration, contract coverage, payment terms, working capital, quality, delivery, risk, and sourcing-project execution.
• Develop and maintain an annual category business plan covering spend outlook, market forecast, sourcing and negotiation pipeline, commercial productivity, VAVE, contract calendar, supplier risks, working-capital opportunities, and key implementation milestones.
• Increase spend under management and contract coverage while reducing unmanaged, fragmented, and non-compliant spend within the assigned category.
• Ensure sourcing decisions comply with JENNMAR policies and applicable legal, trade, ethical, quality, safety, and regulatory requirements.
• Develop category-management talent and capabilities. Where applicable, lead Commodity Managers, Category Managers, Buyers, Analysts, or other procurement resources supporting the assigned spend tower.
• Communicate category strategy, market conditions, financial performance, risks, opportunities, and required decisions clearly to the Chief Procurement Officer, executive leadership, and business-unit stakeholders.

Key Accountabilities and Measures

• Annual validated savings and EBITDA contribution versus approved baseline.
• Commercial productivity / PPV, VAVE / structural productivity, working-capital improvement, and cost avoidance / market mitigation, tracked as distinct value-creation measures.
• Purchase Price Variance (PPV), budget variance, forecast variance, and market/index performance.
• Market competitiveness - category cost performance versus relevant market indices, external benchmarks, and should-cost expectations.
• VAVE pipeline value, approved projects, implementation rate, and realized savings.
• Spend under management and percentage of category spend covered by active contracts.
• Supplier concentration, single-source exposure, dual-source coverage, and critical-supplier risk mitigation.
• Supplier quality, on-time delivery, lead time, service, and corrective-action performance.
• Payment terms, working-capital improvement, inventory impact, and cash-flow contribution.
• Supplier consolidation, preferred-supplier utilization, and sourcing compliance.
• Category strategy milestones, sourcing pipeline execution, and savings realization timing.
• Stakeholder satisfaction and measurable operational/customer impact.

First 12-Month Priorities

1. Establish the category baseline. Complete a global current-state assessment of spend, suppliers, contracts, pricing, specifications, volumes, payment terms, quality, delivery, risk, and market conditions.
2. Create category visibility. Implement a common category dashboard with clear definitions for spend, PPV, savings, VAVE, contract coverage, supplier performance, risk, and working capital.
3. Develop the category strategy. Segment the spend, assess the supply market, identify strategic and leverage opportunities, define preferred suppliers, and establish a three-year category roadmap.
4. Capture near-term value. Launch sourcing, negotiation, supplier-consolidation, index, payment-term, freight, specification, and demand-management initiatives capable of producing measurable first-year benefits.
5. Build the VAVE pipeline. Partner with Engineering and Operations to identify, prioritize, financially validate, and launch structural cost-reduction projects.
6. Address critical supply risks. Identify the highest-risk suppliers, commodities, geographies, and single-source dependencies and implement mitigation plans.
7. Improve commercial discipline. Standardize contract requirements, sourcing processes, savings validation, supplier scorecards, and executive supplier reviews.
8. Increase spend under management. Bring fragmented and locally managed spend into the category strategy where enterprise leverage creates value.
9. Build supplier partnerships. Establish executive relationships and joint productivity roadmaps with the category's most important strategic suppliers.
10. Define the future-state roadmap. Recommend the organization, talent, systems, data, governance, and supplier structure required to sustain category performance.

Qualifications

• Ten or more years of progressive experience in strategic sourcing, procurement, category management, supply chain, operations, engineering, or a related discipline.
• At least five years of leadership responsibility managing significant spend categories in a multi-site industrial, manufacturing, mining, steel, construction-products, heavy-materials, or similarly complex environment.
• Demonstrated success developing and executing enterprise or global category strategies across multiple businesses, plants, regions, or operating models.
• Demonstrated success negotiating major supplier agreements and delivering measurable recurring savings, cost avoidance, and working-capital improvement.
• Strong experience with direct-material or indirect-category economics appropriate to the assigned spend tower, including market indices, cost drivers, supplier capacity, and total-cost analysis.
• Proven ability to lead VAVE, specification rationalization, should-cost, supplier development, localization, and other cross-functional cost-reduction initiatives.
• Strong financial acumen, including PPV, budgets, forecasts, cost models, EBITDA impact, working capital, savings validation, and total landed cost.
• Experience managing supplier risk, continuity planning, supplier concentration, alternate sourcing, and capacity strategies.
• Experience establishing supplier scorecards, performance reviews, corrective actions, and strategic supplier-development programs.
• Strong analytical skills and the ability to convert complex spend, pricing, market, supplier, and operational data into clear sourcing decisions and executive recommendations.
• Experience with ERP, e-sourcing, spend analytics, contract-management, supplier-performance, and business-intelligence tools.
• Global sourcing experience, including international suppliers, trade considerations, duties, tariffs, freight, Incoterms, and cross-border commercial issues, where applicable.
• Excellent communication, influence, and presentation skills, with the ability to work effectively with plant leaders, engineers, finance teams, suppliers, executives, and business-unit leadership.
• Ability to travel domestically and internationally to JENNMAR facilities, suppliers, and other business locations.

Leadership Profile

• A commercially minded category leader who manages spend as a business rather than simply executing sourcing events.
• Strategic and analytical, but sufficiently hands-on to understand plant requirements, supplier operations, technical specifications, and implementation barriers.
• Direct, practical, and metrics-driven, with strong ownership of commitments and financial results.
• A collaborative cross-functional leader who can challenge specifications, demand, sourcing assumptions, and legacy supplier relationships constructively.
• Highly skilled in negotiation and supplier relationship management, with the judgment to know when to lever