Senior Buyer

Babcock Mission Critical Services España SA.; West of England; Hybrid; GBP 55,000 - 75,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Matched contribution pension

Digital GP and health checks

Employee share scheme

Flexible working

Holiday trading

Be Kind Day

Job summary

Babcock Mission Technologies is seeking a Senior Buyer to lead end-to-end procurement across defence and engineering programs. You will source, select suppliers, negotiate contracts, and drive supplier performance within a hybrid work model at Bristol or Plymouth.

The role emphasizes building strong stakeholder relationships, managing high-value orders, and delivering cost reductions while maintaining security clearances and aligning with national security priorities.

Qualifications

• Experience in a procurement, purchasing, sourcing, or supply chain role, ideally in defence, engineering or regulated environments.
• Experience using Enterprise Resource Planning systems within a procurement environment.
• Strong commercial awareness with the ability to manage competing priorities and deliver solutions.
• Experience with supplier performance management, sourcing activities and contract negotiations.

Responsibilities

• Manage end-to-end purchasing activities including sourcing, supplier selection, negotiation and contract placement.
• Lead supplier relationship and performance management activities to achieve business objectives.
• Manage complex and high-value purchase orders through to delivery.
• Build collaborative relationships with internal stakeholders to align procurement strategies with business needs.
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives and deliver operational excellence against KPIs.

Skills

Procurement

Sourcing

Contract negotiations

ERP experience

Supplier management

Stakeholder engagement

Commercial acumen

Education

CIPS membership (advantageous)

Tools

ERP systems

Job description

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Senior Buyer

Location:

Bristol, GB, BS16 1EJ Devonport, Plymouth, GB, PL1 4SG

Onsite or Hybrid: Hybrid

Job Title: Senior Buyer

Location: Bristol or Plymouth + Hybrid Working Arrangements

Compensation: Competitive Salary + Benefits

Role Type: Full time / Permanent

Role ID: SF75729

Shape the future of defence and engineering supply chains

At Babcock, we’re working to create a safe and secure world, together. If you join us, you can play your part as a Senior Buyer at Babcock Mission Technologies, based at either our Plymouth or Bristol site.

The role

As a Senior Buyer, you'll play a critical role in delivering procurement excellence across a range of exciting defence and engineering programmes. Working within our Source to Contract team, you'll help generate significant value by reducing the total cost of goods and services, developing strong supplier partnerships, and ensuring our projects have the materials and services they need to succeed. This is an excellent opportunity to develop your procurement career while contributing to projects that support national security, innovation, and critical infrastructure.

Day-to-day, you’ll be required to:

• Manage end-to-end purchasing activities including sourcing, supplier selection, negotiation, and contract placement.
• Lead supplier relationship and performance management activities to achieve business objectives.
• Manage complex and high-value purchase orders through to successful delivery.
• Build collaborative relationships with internal stakeholders to align procurement strategies with business needs.
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives and delivering operational excellence against key performance indicators.

This role is full time, 37 hours per week and provides hybrid working arrangements with days in the onsite and days working from home.

Essential experience of the Senior Buyer

• Experience in a procurement, purchasing, sourcing, or supply chain role, ideally within a defence, engineering, manufacturing, or highly regulated environment.
• Demonstrated ability to build and maintain effective relationships with internal and external stakeholders.
• Experience using Enterprise Resource Planning systems within a procurement environment.
• Strong commercial awareness with the ability to manage competing priorities and deliver solutions.
• Experience working with supplier performance management, sourcing activities, and contract negotiations.

Qualifications for the Senior Buyer

• Membership of a relevant professional body e.g. CIPS is advantageous but not essential, CIPS training can be provided

Security Clearance

The successful candidate must be able to achieve and maintain Security Check (SC) and Developed Vetting (DV) security clearance for this role.

Many of the positions within our company are subject to national security clearance and Trade Control restrictions. This means that your eligibility for certain roles may be affected by your place of birth, nationality, current or former citizenship, and any residency you hold or have held. Further details are available at United Kingdom Security Vetting: clearance levels - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) .

What we offer

• Matched contribution pension scheme, with life assurance
• Access to a Digital GP, annual health check, and nutritional consultations through Aviva DigiCare+
• Employee share scheme
• Employee shopping savings portal
• Payment of Professional Fees
• Reservists in the armed forces receive 10-days special paid leave
• Holiday Trading is a benefit that allows the majority of employees to buy additional leave or to sell up to one working week of annual leave from their annual entitlement
• 'Be Kind Day' enables employees to take one working day's paid leave a year (or equivalent hours) to undertake volunteering work with their chosen organisation or registered charity
• Flexible working - we give people more options to better integrate their work and personal life, whilst ensuring that business needs are met
• A dynamic working environment

Babcock

We’re Babcock - a global FTSE 100 organisation with over 29,000 people working together to make a difference.

Here, you’ll be part of something bigger. From initial design to final decommissioning, your work will contribute to products and services that are essential to national security and public infrastructure. Together, we’re building a future that lasts - not just through the impact we make, but through meaningful careers that respect your work-life balance.

We call that lifetime engineering.

Join us and see how far we can go, together.

We are a disability confident, committed employer. If you have a disability or need any reasonable adjustments during the application and selection stages, please email [e-mail] with the subject header 'Reasonable adjustments requirement'. We’re committed to building an inclusive culture where everyone’s free to thrive. We are happy to talk about flexible working - please ask about alternative patterns of work at interview.

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