Senior Director - Strategic Sourcing - National Brands

The Senior Director of Strategic Sourcing - National Brands will, in collaboration with the Merchandise Category leaders, provide strategic leadership for National Brand CPG negotiations at 7-Eleven.  This position will serve as a strategic advisor to senior merchandising and business leaders translating business strategy and enterprise growth objectives into supplier strategies and executable negotiation plans.  They will partner with Category leaders, Marketing and other cross functional teams to leverage enterprise spend and portfolio positioning, overlay insights from various analysis to develop supplier negotiation strategies.  This position will lead complex negotiations to drive cost savings, maximize trade funding, leading to cost and margin optimization. The ideal candidate brings experience within convenience or food retail, grocery or consumer packaged goods with demonstrated experience in complex, executive level negotiations specifically with National Brand CPG companies.  

Duties and Responsibilities include but are not limited to:

• Develop and lead a National Brands negotiations team that leverage our enterprise scale to create competitive advantage during negotiations.
• Establish and maintain executive-level relationships with business stakeholders and key supplier partners to influence strategic outcomes and support enterprise growth priorities.
• Collaborate with the various merchandising category leaders and cross functional teams to develop supplier negotiation strategies taking into account enterprise spend, portfolio positioning, and private label alternatives to improve commercial outcomes.
• Facilitate fact-based negotiations by using data-driven sourcing practices—including should-cost analysis, commodity tracking, and market benchmarks—to generate supplier insights, evaluate proposals, and identify savings and funding opportunities.
• Lead complex negotiations in partnership with the category team focused on enabling business growth, innovation, cost competitiveness and risk mitigation. Negotiate cost, rebates, trade funds, promotional allowances, payment terms, service levels, and contract clauses.
• Drive results by establishing clear processes, reporting and decision frameworks. Establish business metrics, tracking negotiation progress, reporting on outcomes, and using performance insights to strengthen supplier accountability, and support enterprise growth priorities.
• Build a high-performing culture of business partnership providing thought leadership, accountability, collaboration and continuous improvement. Develop the team through coaching, prioritization, clear performance expectations and talent development.

Key Leadership Competencies

• Build strong relationships and influence stakeholders, suppliers, and cross-functional partners through indirect leadership across all organizational levels, including senior and executive audiences.
• Communicate negotiation strategies, business recommendations, and priorities clearly, tailoring message and level of detail to the audience while making complex topics easy to understand.
• Understand company vision, strategy, functional priorities, and related processes to provide leadership with informed recommendations on negotiation strategy, contract language, business value, cost, and risk.
• Serve as a strategic sourcing thought leader by developing data-backed category and supplier strategies, challenging legacy ways of working, bringing external market insight into decisions, and influencing changes that enable growth, innovation and enterprise value.
• Operate effectively in ambiguous, fast-moving environments by creating clarity, aligning stakeholders, identifying dependencies, and converting complex business challenges into actionable strategies.

Knowledge, Skills, and Experience

• Education: Bachelor’s degree, Masters preferred
• Minimum 10 - 15+ years within convenience/food retail, grocery, or consumer-packaged goods environments preferred
• 15+ years leading large, complex teams, projects, or strategic sourcing/procurement functions in a large organization; with end-to-end sourcing process knowledge preferred.
• Demonstrated success developing negotiation strategies and leading complex contract negotiations that support cost, quality, service, risk management, and business objectives.
• Experience developing sourcing strategies, category roadmaps, and managing supplier relationships, preferably in National Brands, consumer packaged goods, food and beverage, general merchandise, or related retail categories.
• Strong analytical skills, business acumen, and process improvement mindset, with the ability to use data, market intelligence, supplier insights, and scalable tools to support negotiations and executive recommendations.
• Advanced proficiency in Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint, with strong interpersonal, written, and verbal communication skills and the ability to work effectively with multiple stakeholders at all organizational levels.

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