The role
As an Associate Director, Procurement, you will report to the Procurement Director and own the strategy, performance, and people development for your category cluster. This is a 12-month fixed-term position. You will lead a team of Category Managers, set the direction for supplier relationships and commercial outcomes, and operate as the senior point of escalation across operational and strategic procurement challenges.
This is a role for a procurement professional who is equally comfortable in a negotiation room with a strategic supplier, a governance forum with senior cross-functional leaders, and a development conversation with a direct report. You will act as a connector between your team's day-to-day work and the broader supply chain strategy and as a builder of capability, process, and relationships that outlast the current planning cycle.
What you’ll do
Strategy & Category Leadership
- Define and own the multi-year category strategy for your cluster sourcing model, supplier segmentation, risk posture, and cost ambition and present that strategy coherently to Director-level stakeholders.
- Translate market intelligence (commodity dynamics, seasonality, geopolitical risk, supply constraints) into actionable procurement decisions and communicate them with clarity and confidence.
- Lead cross-category standardization and process improvement initiatives, identifying leverage across the broader portfolio where applicable.
Supplier Relationships & Partnerships
- Build and steward the most strategically important supplier relationships in your cluster, including joint investment plans, multi-year contracts, and structured partnership governance.
- Lead or oversee tender processes end-to-end — from strategy and data-pack through to award, contract, and supplier briefing at pace and to a high standard of documentation.
- Act as the senior escalation point for supply disruptions, quality issues, and commercial disputes, resolving with a mix of supplier accountability and operational pragmatism.
- Develop new or alternative suppliers to strengthen resilience and competitiveness across your category network.
Performance, Data & Commercial Delivery
- Take full commercial accountability for your cluster's cost performance, savings targets, and COGS variance — ensuring outcomes are tracked, explained, and acted upon.
- Drive a data-first culture within your team: category reviews, investment cases, and supplier performance assessments should be grounded in robust analysis and structured decision-making.
- Contribute to seasonality planning, static pricing rounds, and volume S&OP processes with the rigour and cross-functional coordination those forums require.
- Oversee cost reporting, invoice validation and supplier database quality for your cluster.
Team Leadership & Development
- Lead, coach and develop a team of Category Managers, creating a high-performance environment that is psychologically safe, commercially ambitious, and genuinely invested in its people.
- Shift progressively from doing to enabling: your job is to build the capability of your team, not to be their best individual contributor.
- Own team capacity planning, workload prioritization, and performance development including calibration, promotion cases, and succession thinking.
- Foster a culture of continuous improvement, clear communication, and accountability without micromanagement.
Stakeholder & Cross-functional Leadership
- Build and maintain strong working relationships with Product, Supply Chain Operations, FSQA, Finance, and Legal representing Procurement credib… Associate Director International Procurement — hellofresh, Berlin.